Pierre Coffin returns to Minions with new film

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 was “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 — create 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 Brian Lynch. “It’s the first time Chris really let me do my own thing,” he says.

“Minions & Monsters” follows James, an imaginative Minion who dreams of making movies, and his loyal friends Henry and Ed, who help him bring his stories to life. Their adventure unfolds under the eye of Max, a larger-than-life director inspired by European filmmakers such as Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1920’s and became pillars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The journey sent Coffin back into his own childhood: Sunday-morning silent comedies, Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the awe of arriving in Detroit as a 10 year-old, sitting in a big theater to watch “Star Wars” and later becoming fascinated by classic horror movies. Speaking over Zoom from London, days before “Minions & Monsters” world premiered on opening night of the Annecy animation festival, Coffin reflected on the making of the Illumination blockbuster franchise, the art of crafting irreverent comedy for children and adults, the language of the Minions and where he stands on AI.

-Variety