“Despicable Me” is one of the funniest and most original animated movies of the past decade thanks, in large part, to the Minions. In case you don’t know, they’re the little yellow creatures who assist scientist Gru (Steve Carell) in his lab and help him to try to stealing the moon. They pull a lot of pranks on each other and speak a funny language all their own. They were, as I wrote in my review of the film, the break-out stars of the movie.
“Despicable Me 2” is the next movie for Illumination Entertainment (who also made “Hop” and “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax”). Carell will return as Gru along with most of the original cast, and Al Pacino and Steve Coogan are among the newcomers. “ME2” opens July 3rd, 2013.
And now Illumination has announced that there will be a Minions Movie, scheduled for release in 2014. While it isn’t a surprise that the studio would want to showcase these guys in their own film, I’m wondering why so soon after “ME2”?
Illumination has had many projects on their plate for the past several years, including a stop-motion “Addams Family” (possibly being directed by Tim Burton), live-action/animated reboots of “Curious George” and “Clifford The Big Red Dog”, a CGI reboot of “Woody Woodpecker”, a new CGI “Cat in the Hat” (due to the success of “The Lorax”), and a biopic on Dr. Seuss (possibly starring Johnny Depp).
I would rather see some of those films get into the production pipe-line and make it onto the big screen (to show more diversity in Illumination Entertainment) before a Minion Movie only a year after “Despicable Me 2”. Clearly they want to load-up and really build this franchise while these characters are popular, but could this be a case of a studio putting all it’s minions in one basket? Come to think of it – that would be fun to see!