VOD Spotlight: The Making of Minions

While Gru, Margo, Edith and Agnes are the stars of the Despicable Me series, it was time for the Minions to shine in their own movie. Explains director Pierre Coffin: “We pushed the boundaries on this movie to make it not about sidekicks. It’s not about funny secondary characters. We were all in because we had a good story, good characters and felt that there was a challenge to give people something very special.”

Brian Lynch, who wrote the movie’s screenplay agrees with his director and, much like the Minions, the filmmakers are part of a very collaborative process. “We were all committed to not putting out anything but the best, funniest version of a Minion movie that could possibly be, and this is the Minions in the big summer movie that I’d want to see. They don’t have the protection of Gru; it’s them against the world, and the world isn’t ready for them. The Minions can take anything and keep going. They don’t always get it right the first time, but they’ll get it right the 100th time.”

Producer and CEO of Illumination Entertainment (the production company behind  Minions and the Despicable Me movies) Chris Melendari says: “They’re not just adorable. They’re so appealing because of this contradiction between their aspiration to be bad, and their essential nature that makes them so good. We all have that side to us.” He continues, “Illumination movies are always about characters. And in the case of the Minions movie, just like every other film, we wanted to explore dimensional personalities and characters, which we have done with our lead Minions — Kevin, Stuart and Bob.”

Minions_webLynch shares the reason why he wanted the Minions tale to be a 1969 prequel to the events that began in 2010: “We all have a little Minion in us, some of us more than others. People have so many questions about who the Minions are and where they came from that we realized it would be a lot of fun to answer those.”

“It’s great to see the Minions in this big, cruel world before Gru comes along,” reflects the writer. “He is there to protect them in the first two movies and is very much a father figure. As much as the Minions want a villain to lead them, they want a family to be a part of. In this movie, they don’t have that yet and are trying to figure out that that’s what they really want.”

Minions is available beginning Dec. 8 on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.

© 2015 Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment Credit: Universal Pictures.