Pierre Coffin thought he was done with the Minions.
After nearly two decades inside the “Despicable Me” universe — the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time, with more than $5.5 billion worldwide across six films — the French animator had earned the right to feel worn out. Coffin co-directed four of those movies and voices every last one of the yellow creatures himself.
“Each film takes three years, sometimes four when things don’t go as planned. It’s exhausting,” Coffin says, sounding disarmingly candid during an interview with Variety. So after “Despicable Me 3,” he told Illumination founder Chris Meledandri he wanted out, and turned his attention to other projects, including the Olympics, short films and marketing work.
Then, one weekend about three years ago, Meledandri called with an idea — a Minion who sets out to make a monster movie. “When he told me that, I tuned out the monster. I got stuck on the word ‘movie’… That opened something up… Suddenly, I had a billion ideas,” he said. What surfaced became “Minions & Monsters” which sees the Minions making films at the birth of Hollywood. Coffin came up with the 1920s backdrop – an era that saw cinema shift from silent films to talkies — and did something the franchise rarely permits — make something personal. “Minions & Monsters” marks his solo-directing debut and it’s also the only film in the franchise that he was able to fully co-write with Bryan Lynch. “It’s the first time Chris really let me do my own thing,” he says.
