The Minions themselves have become ubiquitous outside of the films as well: ubiquitous as licensed merchandise, theme park attractions, TikTok trends, and Facebook memes. “The design and the feel of it is very toy-friendly,” said Renauld, who also directed “Despicable Me 4.” “It has this simplicity. You can make memes, they’re easy to draw — it’s something you want to park on your desk.”
But while the Minions’ ubiquity may be a testament to their popularity, Coffin seemed to have one regret, creatively speaking. “When ‘Minions’ came out, I had two reactions,” he said. “One, the marketing is overwhelming and I think they overdid it. And two, how the hell did we make a billion dollars off of this movie?”
Yes, the first “Minions” film, directed by Coffin and Kyle Balda, is one of the highest-grossing films of all time. But according to Coffin, “it was the marketing that made the film a financial success, not necessarily a creative success.” In short, he said, “we could have done better.”
When Coffin sees “Minions” on TV in Paris, where he lives with his family, he thinks about what the film might have been: simpler, less conventional, maybe more like “Shaun the Sheep,” an 84-minute British comedy with no dialogue, just pure nonsense. Renauld disagreed. “I think ‘Shaun the Sheep’ is great,” he said. But “our films beat around the bush in a way that ‘Shaun the Sheep’ didn’t. If you want to reach a broad audience, it would be very difficult to just do it without dialogue.”
Meledandri, the producer, suggested that Coffin’s resistance to the conventional style of the Minions films is characteristic of a “rebellious quality” that is “so important to who Pierre is as an artist.” He described working with Coffin as a process in which there was “a really healthy tension” between his independent spirit and the demands of a broadly accessible family film.
“He’ll hate for me to say this, but there’s a lot about Pierre that reminds me of the Minions,” Meledandri said. “He’s incredibly sweet at his core, but that sweetness is combined with a subversive attitude. His fierce independence is a key part of constantly surprising us as we’ve worked on the films — and ultimately surprising the audience.”
