Paul Feig has never been a filmmaker with much patience for repetition. Rather than capture a slew of similar takes, the 61-year-old director likes to find moments in his comedies with room for improvisation and let his actors rattle off alternate gags, in case on-set spontaneity trumps scripted precision.

“I don’t want to do the same thing over and over and over again,” Feig says. “It’s kind of an exhausting process. It’s invigorating, and you’re working with these amazing, hilarious people who bring so much to the game, but it is kind of this controlled chaos that you are in.”

Feig also applies that spirit to his filmography, which has been intriguingly eclectic in recent years. After his movie career took off with 2011’s sidesplitting juggernaut “Bridesmaids,” the “Freaks and Geeks” creator put his stamp on all manner of improv-heavy action comedies (“The Heat,” “Spy,” “Ghostbusters”). But Feig has ranged wider in recent years, working on a tongue-in-cheek thriller (2018’s “A Simple Favor”), a macabre rom-com (2019’s “Last Christmas”) and a young-adult fantasy flick (2022’s “The School for Good and Evil”).

His latest film, the dystopian satire “Jackpot!,” brings Feig back to his wheelhouse. The stunt- and improv-heavy romp follows struggling Los Angeles actress Katie Kim (Awkwafina) as she unwittingly wins a multibillion-dollar lottery — with the caveat that thousands of people are eligible to murder her before sundown and claim the jackpot for themselves. Also starring John Cena and Simu Liu as contractors aiming to protect Katie in exchange for a slice of the winnings, “Jackpot!” is streaming on Prime Video.

Speaking over video chat from Burbank, Calif., where he’s in postproduction on the sequel to “A Simple Favor,” Feig discussed his varied body of work, why he doesn’t like using guns in his movies, and learning life lessons from Cena.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: “Jackpot!” represents your return to action-comedy. What made you want to dive back into that kind of filmmaking?

A: I really missed it. It’s a really fun thing to do, because I love doing stunts and planning them out, but it’s hard to find the right story for it. So the hook of this lottery was the perfect thing to hang it on. But I wouldn’t have done it if there was a lot of gunplay in it, because I’m not a big fan of guns in movies — especially when I’m making them. But the fact that the only rule of the lottery is you can’t use a gun, I was like, “Okay, then this is going to be hilarious.” Because it’s all just people grabbing stuff, the way in a Jackie Chan movie he’s fighting with a ladder and bottles and other weird things he finds.

Q: It’s interesting that you don’t like guns in movies. Is that because you don’t find that kind of action compelling on-screen, or is it more tied to guns’ place in the state of the country?

A: I don’t like romanticizing guns. Nobody enjoys the John Wick movies more than me, and that’s just all gunplay, but for myself, I’m never comfortable when a gun is on the set. When we were doing “Spy,” the very first day, one of the stunt guys’ machine guns just went off. It was all blanks, but it was like, “What the (expletive) is going on?” Again, I just don’t want to glorify guns. It’s not really what I’m about. Guns are kind of the enemy of comedy, a little bit. And, look, they’re in my movies. They’re all over “The Heat,” and they’re all over “Spy,” so I do it if it works for the story. But I’d rather just leave them out, if I can.

Q: Reflecting on “A Simple Favor,” “Last Christmas” and “The School for Good and Evil,” what made you interested in stepping away from your typical brand of comedy and stretching yourself in those genre films?

A: Howard Hawks is my favorite director of all time, because he did everything. That’s the career that I want to have. I think part of it comes from being a TV director for so many years, because you’re going from show to show, and one day you’re on a medical show, the next day you’re on an over-the-top comedy, the next day you’re on a docuseries. So I’m always looking for different genres. There’s genres I haven’t gotten to yet: musical, western, sci-fi epic. The sky’s the limit, so I’ll just keep peeling them off.

Q: I, for one, would very much look forward to your musical western sci-fi epic.

A: I’ll do them all at once! Exactly, and get them all out of the way.

Q: What’s the through line to your movies, even as you traverse different genres?

A: They’re all about underdogs, about people who have lost their confidence or who the world doesn’t understand. I just always relate to the downtrodden and the underappreciated. I don’t think I could do a script about, like, the coolest lawyer in town and then he has a downfall. I don’t care. I’m not interested in that guy.

Q: Does that stem from your upbringing in Michigan?

A: Yeah, I was a big nerd growing up. I had lots of good friends, but the bullies were pretty bad. If you go back to “Freaks and Geeks,” that’s the world I relate to. For me, the lead character has to have aspects of life that I’ve gone through or that I relate to so I can be in their head. If you’re not in the head of your main character, it’s almost impossible to make a movie that resonates with an audience. That’s why I love genre so much — that’s the window dressing a relatable story goes into. I lecture to film students, “If you’re going to tell that personal story and you want to be commercial, is there a way that you can tell that story through sci-fi or through some other genre?”

In Hollywood, they call it mixed genre, which used to be a bad word, and now it’s apparently not a bad word anymore. When I was trying to set up the first “Simple Favor,” a lot of studio heads were like: “Well, we can’t do it, because it’s mixed genre. It’s not a straight-up comedy, and it’s not a straight-up thriller, so it’s a comedic thriller? We don’t know what to do with that.” But in the intervening years, I think everything is starting to become mixed genre. If you think about it, most comedy is done in horror movies these days. A movie like “M3GAN”? I’m sorry, that’s a comedy. It’s a really great thriller and a scary movie, but it’s funny. Going back to “Jackpot!,” I liked it because it’s got this really social commentary and this pretty high-stakes story buried under a pretty ridiculous movie.

Q: You mentioned needing to relate to your protagonists. How did you connect to Katie in “Jackpot!”?

A: Having been tormented by bullies in the past, and also when “Ghostbusters” came out and all the mean people on the internet were (going after) me, there is something you kind of relate to. If the whole world comes after you, you know that emotion. So it felt weirdly personal to me.

Q: I love that you raided the Marvel and DC Comics universes for your cast. How unfair is it for physical behemoths like John and Simu to also be that funny and charming?

A: It’s very not fair. Trust me, nobody’s more jealous than I am of those guys. But they’re really good people who work really hard and have massive amounts of talent. Have you ever heard any of Simu’s music? It’s fantastic. And then John is a straight-up genius. The guy taught himself Mandarin. He reads the headiest books you’ve ever seen in your life. Between takes, he’d go to his trailer because he’s teaching himself how to play jazz piano. He said to (Awkwafina) once that the brain is a muscle and you have to work it all the time. And who knows more about muscles than John Cena?

Q: Now you’re working on your first sequel with the “Simple Favor” follow-up. How has that experience been?

A: It’s cool. I mean, I have avoided it like the plague. I have never been drawn to doing sequels, but I love these characters.

Q: And once you’re done with that film, you’ll get to the musical western sci-fi epic?

A: Exactly, it’ll be the next movie. Get ready.