The Kidd here...
My son may be a big fan of DESPICABLE ME (he certains watches the DVD enough), but I was a bit underwhelmed by a movie centered around a villain, as he eventually becomes good. I was much more entertained by his yellow, gibberish-speaking Minions, and remember thinking to myself that I'd rather have been watching an entire movie about them than Steve Carrell's Gru and his three adopted children.
I guess I should have been careful about what I was wishing for.
According to Deadline, Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment are moving forward with a DESPICABLE ME spin-off that would be all about the Minions. The as-yet-untitled flick is being targeted for a 2014 release date.
Brian Lynch already has a finished script written, and it looks like Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda are set to co-direct (Coffin already had co-directed the first film and is set to do the same for the DESPICABLE ME sequel).
While I'm not sure how the Minions are going to be able to react with other characters outside of their own for a full-length feature film, it's not that far-fetched that they can make such an idea work. After all, Pixar took on such a challenge with WALL-E, which featured a character that didn't really speak and yet the simplicity of that set-up is actually a strength of the film. For the younger audience, they can understand what's going on easier in the film through the characters' actions rather than their words.
Between the sequels and spin-offs and the theme park attractions, Universal seems to have built a pretty solid franchise for themselves here.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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