Pierre Coffin And Chris Meledandri On ‘Minions,’ Auteur Ambitions, And Illumination’s French Roots

The Minions franchise has a long history with the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The very first Despicable Me movie had its world premiere at the festival, and since then, every film in the series has had at least some presence here.

But seven movies in 16 years is a lot of Minions. So when Pierre Coffin, who co-directed the first Despicable Me and Minions films, finally decided to return to these characters, he knew he wanted to do something new.

“I was there to try and say, like, no, this one is different. This one is a period piece,” Coffin said during an interview with Cartoon Brew following the world premiere of Minions & Monsters at the 2026 edition of Annecy.

The franchise’s latest is a movie perhaps best described as Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, but with Minions; a story about old Hollywood, its debauchery, its grandiosity, and the chaos surrounding the arrival of sound in cinema and all that was lost. It feels strange to think that this year’s big Hollywood love letter to itself is a Minions movie, but somehow it works. There are sweeping panoramic shots, epic set pieces, inventive lighting, and physical comedy inspired by silent-era greats like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. This was what drew Coffin back for another Minions movie.

“The thing that really excited us both was the idea of creating this other thing that could be exciting, that would be exciting for me to develop and for the animators and all the graphics people who work on it to be excited by,” Coffin said. Some of the people who worked on Minions & Monsters have been around since the first Despicable Me, and others since Coffin’s very early commercial work, so this movie needed to offer something completely new.

According to Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri, the film uses cinematic language differently from other movies in the Despicable Me universe, a choice he believes defies franchise expectations.

“If you were to ask an audience before they see the film what they would want in a future Minions movie, most audiences would describe something that would sound like more of what they just saw,” he said. As a result, there is curiosity about taking the franchise in a new direction, but also some caution when deviating from expectations of familiarity.

“I think what I’ve learned from our perspective, having no idea how this film is going to be received in the world, I think what we come away with feeling is it was very important for it to feel very different,” the Illumination founder explained.

This is part of Illumination’s push to return to its original roots and develop its directing talent in-house. We saw this with Benjamin Renner on Migration, which Meledandri said started to move the studio “more in the direction of a French tradition, which is obviously a more auteur direction.” Minions & Monsters, believe it or not, continues that trend.

Granted, talking about originality when so much of the film consists of references and homages to classic cinema may sound ironic. Still, it is the way the movie incorporates the language of live-action westerns, noir, and even biblical epics into the franchise’s own language that makes it feel original. These are mostly references that will go over the heads of younger viewers, just as they did for many audience members when The Simpsons parodied Cape Fear or Rear Window.

According to Coffin, the team experimented with different types of movies to homage. But there was a problem with doing direct parodies or references.

“Finding things with Minions isn’t as straightforward as writing it and then boarding it and then lighting it, and that’s it,” Coffin said. “Some ideas that you can have just don’t work because I don’t have the words, because I don’t know how to transmit the idea of, ‘Oh, he’s saying that,’” referring to the Minions’ language, which the director also created and performs.

The solution came in the form of real history: the invention of sound in cinema. Just as in real life, sound in movies ended many careers because performers could not make the transition to dialogue. Minions & Monsters pokes fun at the advent of sound and the fact that the Minions do not speak English. As a result, the Minions quickly lose their power and influence in Hollywood, and shenanigans ensue.

Yes, this is basically Singin’ in the Rain with Minions, only with fewer choreographed musical numbers. Still, if we are going to get a seventh film in this franchise, committing fully to a specific creative direction unlike anything the series has done before is about the best outcome we could hope for.