Visit our YouTube Channel

Fresh off the worldwide blockbuster success of summer 2024’s funniest comedy, Despicable Me 4, Illumination expands its joyful animated universe with a riotous new chapter, featuring all-new characters, in the biggest global animated franchise in history: Minions & Monsters. 

This is the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story of how the Minions conquered Hollywood, became movie stars, lost everything, unleashed monsters onto the world and then banded together to try to save the planet from the mayhem they had just created. 

More than ten years after their creation, the Minions have become the most iconic animated characters of their generation. Globally recognized and beloved by fans of all ages, they have propelled Illumination’s Despicable Me and Minions to a global box office of more than $5.6 billion.

Minions & Monsters is directed by Pierre Coffin, the director of the first three Despicable Me films and the first Minions film. The film is written by Brian Lynch (Minions, The Secret Life of Pets films) and Pierre Coffin.

---

Across Illumination’s Despicable Me and Minions films, the Minions have become the most globally recognizable characters in animation, fueling a franchise that is now the most successful animated film series in history.

Their appeal is immediate and universal: they are expressive, impulsive, deeply loyal and almost always one misunderstanding away from disaster. They may not speak a language audiences can translate word-for-word, but they have always made themselves understood through movement, emotion, sound and the precise art of physical comedy.

That comic language remains central to Minions & Monsters, a new chapter that follows a different tribe of Minions on their ongoing, impossible mission: finding the most evil boss of their time to serve. That mission has never gone particularly well. Across history, this tribe has pledged itself to an array of evil bosses, including a cyclops, a mummy, a pirate, an ancient ruler and a sorcerer, only for each alliance to collapse in spectacular fashion. In Minions & Monsters, their search for a new boss brings them to 1920s Hollywood, but instead of finding another villain to serve, they discover something far more unexpected: the movies.

For Pierre Coffin, who has co-directed four films in the franchise and has voiced the Minions in every installment, Minions & Monsters marks his first solo directorial turn within the series, and it offered him a chance to explore new Minion characters from a fresh perspective. The film moves beyond the classic trio of Kevin, Stuart and Bob to instead center on new characters James and Henry, two best friends whose discovery of moviemaking turns their latest misadventure into something more personal.

---

The idea began with Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri.

“Chris called me with the idea of a Minions movie about the Minions trying to make a monster movie,” Coffin says. “I loved it right away because it felt very funny and very true to them. The Minions are always trying to serve someone else’s dream, but this gave us a way to let them discover one of their own. We immediately thought that setting it in the 1920s made sense because cinema was still being invented. It was a world of instinct and physical comedy, which felt like the perfect place for the Minions to end up.”

Coffin developed the screenplay with Brian Lynch, who wrote Minions and shares story credit on Minions: The Rise of Gru. “I’ve worked with Pierre a lot, but this was the first time co-writing something with him,” Lynch says. “I loved it. We would bounce ideas off each other, and then send script pages back and forth, trying to make the other laugh. Plus, I got to write a Minions movie with the Minions as my co-writer. Who else can say that?”

Together, Coffin and Lynch shaped the story around Hollywood at a moment when filmmaking was still experimental and full of possibility. “This is a very personal film for Pierre,” Meledandri says. “He has labored over every frame, and you can feel his love of cinema throughout the movie. I have always seen the film as a story about discovering the magic of making movies, told through characters who were almost made for silent cinema. The Minions have always communicated through performance and physical comedy, so placing them in that era allowed us to celebrate the birth of film in a way that felt completely natural to them.”

The premise takes shape when the Minions accidentally stumble into a scene on a Hollywood set. What should be a disaster becomes an opportunity when the studio bosses see the footage and recognize something strangely compelling in the yellow outsiders. Soon, the Minions are catapulted into stardom after starring in a string of silent pictures. “For a little while, Hollywood is the perfect place for them,” Coffin says. “Silent movies are built around timing, movement and expression, which the Minions understand instinctively. They do not have to deliver dialogue or know English. They can simply perform, and suddenly, the industry values exactly what they do best, and they become extremely successful at it.”

Then, the movies start talking. The arrival of sound changes Hollywood almost overnight, and the Minions’ greatest strength becomes their greatest liability. “Once sound arrives, everything changes for them,” Coffin says. “They cannot say a line the same way twice. They cannot read a script or follow cue cards. They cannot become polished in the way the industry now expects. So, they lose their place in that world, but James has already fallen in love with moviemaking, and he is not ready to give it up.”

That ambition pulls James and Henry into a new kind of misadventure. Joined by Ed, whose friendship completes the trio, they set out to make a monster movie inspired by James’ drawings. What begins as an attempt to reclaim their place in Hollywood soon becomes something far more dangerous. The monsters are no longer just ideas on a page, and the little film they hoped would prove their worth in Hollywood sends the Minions into a story that threatens to grow beyond anything they can control.

---

For Coffin, the monster-movie premise reached back to his own childhood fascination with classic creatures and practical movie magic.

“Monster movies made a strong impression on me when I was young,” Coffin says. “When I was about 10, I moved to the United States and felt very lost at school. I remember going into the library, looking for French books and finding a book about Frankenstein makeup. I did not really know Frankenstein yet, but I was completely drawn to the images. From there, I started discovering the Mummy, Dracula, Bela Lugosi and all of those classic characters. Monsters became part of how I discovered movies.”

That affection runs through Minions & Monsters, which draws from classic monster cinema while also pulling from the visual language of early Hollywood. Among its many inspirations and references, the film nods to the physical daring of Harold Lloyd, the deadpan precision of Buster Keaton, the expressive comedy of Charlie Chaplin and the elastic cartoons of Tex Avery. It also draws from the various styles that shaped the films of the period. “We wanted the references to be subtle and feel like part of the world,” Coffin says. “Some are direct, but many are more about the spirit of the period. It might be the way a scene is lit, the way a camera is placed or the rhythm of a performance. The goal was always to make those influences feel natural, so they would organically support the comedy and story.”

The 1920s setting also gave the filmmakers a chance to capture Hollywood at a moment of cultural and social transformation. “The twenties were fascinating because movies were changing, but so was the world around them,” Coffin says. “There is the excitement of the studios, but there is also everything happening outside them: Prohibition, public protests and women fighting for their rights. All of that gave the story a richer backdrop and helped us make Hollywood feel like a world in transition.”

For all its old Hollywood detail, monster-movie spectacle and film-history references, Minions & Monsters is ultimately grounded in the loyalty between James, Henry and Ed, and in the simple act of friends trying to create something together. “What mattered most to me was the friendship,” Coffin says. “James has a huge imagination. He loves to draw, he loves to tell stories, and when he discovers movies, he suddenly sees a way to bring those stories to life. Henry and Ed believe in him before anyone else does, and that gives him the courage to try. I liked the idea that chasing your dreams is a little less intimidating when you have your friends by your side.”

That idea also reflected the spirit of the production itself. “Minions & Monsters is about a group of friends making a movie,” Lynch says. “And it was literally that situation behind the scenes as well. We’ve all worked together for so long, over the course of so many movies, that it really felt like making a movie with my friends.”

The qualities that define the Minions in this chapter have been remarkably consistent across the franchise. “That is what has allowed us to continue taking them to new and unexpected places,” Meledandri says. “We’ve seen them in 1960s England and 1970s San Francisco, and now, with this film, they enter the birth of Hollywood and the world of monster movies, but their appeal is the same. They are curious, hardworking, easily distracted, loyal and completely sincere. They never approach anything halfway. Whatever world they enter, they give themselves over to it completely, and that is why the comedy works and why they continue to charm audiences.”

In Minions & Monsters, that familiar sincerity becomes the foundation for a story about discovery. “For James, especially, movies become a way to take the stories in his imagination and make them real,” Coffin says. “That felt meaningful to me because it is such a pure way of looking at moviemaking. He is not thinking about success or technique. He is thinking about the wonder of seeing something he imagined come to life and sharing it with the world.”

Cinematic References

For director Pierre Coffin, Minions & Monsters offered the chance to build a Minions story directly inside movie history. The film is filled with references to early cinema, classic Hollywood, silent comedy, monster movies and animation history, but Coffin wanted those details to feel embedded in the world. “Animation gives you the freedom to hide little references everywhere,” Coffin says. “You can put something in the background, on a cue card, in a poster or in the way a shot is composed. Not everyone will notice every reference, but that is part of the pleasure of it.”

• The film includes references to Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of motion, the Lumière brothers and early images associated with the birth of cinema.
• Silent comedy informed the Minions’ physical performance, with nods to Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
• Tex Avery’s elastic cartoon comedy inspired the film’s physical humor.
• The film draws on Hollywood’s transition to sound and the way it changed performance, production and movie stardom.
• Coffin and the team looked to films such as Casablanca for black-and-white lighting, atmosphere, camera placement and period feeling.
• Movies like Singin’ in the Rain helped the filmmakers imagine the color, lighting and energy of 1920s Hollywood.
• For the film’s second half, Coffin and the team looked to classic science-fiction and monster movies including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, The Blob, The Fly, Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer Space, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Godzilla.
• Fake movie titles were designed as period-style jokes, with co-writer Brian Lynch drawing from old Hollywood genres including westerns, science fiction and adventure films.
• Coffin’s love of monster films helped shape the film’s monster-movie premise, while H.P. Lovecraft’s mythology of strange, ancient creatures influenced parts of the monster designs.
• Production designer CHARLOTTE HUTCHINSON, a Minions and Despicable Me franchise veteran, oversaw the sketchbook art, posters and drawings that James creates in the film.
• Fans can also look to the film’s background details and shot compositions for additional Easter eggs hidden throughout the movie.

---