Could we get a Minions and Backrooms crossover movie? I’m not sure it would work, since it’d be yellow on yellow. You’d only see their eyes, and even those would be hard to make out. It’d just be voices coming out of yellow.
Will there be a gritty “old man Minion” story to wrap up the franchise? Minions don’t age. I sometimes draw them like that for fun, but it just looks weird.
Do Minions live forever? Yes.
Will we ever see a female Minion? How do they reproduce? I think a female Minion would be the beginning of the end. Universal would probably want to do it, thinking it would please all the women out there. But I’m not convinced. If I were a woman, I’d think it was tokenistic. I’m not saying we won’t do it or try, but maybe it’s not meant to be. Or maybe it is! Who knows.
We did play around with the idea of the Minions landing on an island with another tribe that seemed all female. But it never went further than that. In my head, female Minions would look exactly the same as male ones. And as for how they breed: they don’t. They just exist.
Minions & Monsters doesn’t follow the timeline after Minions 2: The Rise of Gru, but goes back a few decades. Why did that time period feel right for this new installment? From the moment Chris Meledandri suggested making a Minion movie where the Minions are making a movie, I thought it would be cool to set it in that forgotten era when cinema became an industry. People like Fritz Lang and Michael Curtiz were moving from Eastern Europe to build studios and create the best movies ever.
The visuals from that time also match the spirit of the Minions. I love highly choreographed stuff and elaborate one-takes. We nod to Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Chaplin, and have fun with history by suggesting that certain scenes became iconic thanks to the Minions.
If you could remake a French New Wave film with Minions as the cast, which would you choose and why? Breathless. At the end of the new movie, we show the Minions messing up classic movies throughout history. Like killing off one of the Eight Samurai, or crashing the editing room of Breathless, which is why it ended up a bit shaky.
Do you like bananas in real life? I’m not crazy about them. I have a couple a month. There are other fruits, and sometimes I prefer salad. But bananas are very practical. They come with their own wrapper. I really wanted to give the Minions a craving, and a banana made total sense because of the color.
I love how the Minions have such distinct personalities – does it annoy you when people lump them together? There’s truth in both statements. In the first two Despicable Me movies, they’re just a group. But with Minions, we needed three really distinct characters, so we made Kevin, Stuart, and Bob: authority, aloofness, and naivety. After that, we felt we shouldn’t keep doing the Smurf thing. So in the second Minions movie, there’s a Minion named Otto. He’s the kind of guy you ask “How’s it going?” and he suddenly bursts out with his whole life story: “Oh, everything’s going fine. I love the weather. You won’t believe what happened to me today…” And if you let him talk for 15 minutes without stopping, he’d eventually get around to Trump.
So there are characters with arcs in the later movies, and I do feel protective and defensive toward them because they’re not just critters. They’re not soulless. They’re not things. They’re individuals. Sometimes, when I watch the movies, I see a sequence where I messed up in this respect, and that’s not good. I think what people dislikeWhat makes them interesting and likely to succeed is that even though they look funny, cool, and have a graphic style, they still have soul.
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Pierre Coffin greets fans before the Minions & Monsters premiere in Los Angeles. Photograph: Savion Washington/Getty Images for Illumination And Universal Pictures
Which of the Minions do you think you most closely take after?
Worcestershire Wanderer
Stuart, because we both play the ukulele. He’s aloof and doesn’t talk much, and I aspire to be a French nihilist.
Is Minionese purely gibberish or does it have some kind of linguistic structure? If so, what is it, and do you adjust it for different countries?
laurasnapes
It doesn’t have a linguistic structure. It has melody. If a Minion asks a question, it has the melody of a question. If it’s a joke, it has the rhythm of a joke. The secret of Minionese is finding the right melody and adding words to help people understand what the sentence is about. Or throwing in Indian dishes or famous singers just for fun.
Pierre Coffin: Me and my Minions
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I feel a bit like a fraud, because it’s not a real language. It’s gibberish. Just tricks to help people understand things that are sometimes complex. Sometimes, we change the scene because I can’t find the right melody. That’s why the films take three years.
When the visuals are done, I spend three weeks recording audio at my house [Coffin voices the Minions in all regions except China]. The first week is just me redoing small words, because in some languages I accidentally say a swear word or name a body part I shouldn’t. Then the other two weeks are spent on story points, trying to make them more local. For example, “big boss” becomes “gran jefe” in South America.
If you worked for Spielberg in 1993, how come you were based in London?
bumble1
I worked for a year at Spielberg’s Amblimation, where he made traditional animated movies like An American Tail, We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story, and Balto. Then he took a lot of people back to the US and created DreamWorks.
Amblimation was based in Acton [in west London], and I lived there with my girlfriend. The job was great because we could work on Disney-quality animated movies in Europe, which was a big deal, and that’s when I got into computers. But even though I loved the Chinese and Indian restaurants in Acton, the place felt a bit strange to us French people. I haven’t been back, but I’m curious.
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Smell of success … the Ultimate Fart Blaster is one piece of merchandise Coffin has kept. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock
How does it feel that the Minions have become a vehicle for some of the most surreal types of meme communication?
Ireallyneedtea
I think it’s cool that people make the Minions their own. Sometimes I find it really funny, sometimes very creepy. But even if it’s irreverent, even if it goes beyond what’s meant for children, it’s cool that they’re part of pop culture.
My house is full of Minions merchandise. Do you get it all for free?
bumble1
Yes, but I got so overwhelmed that I asked them to stop sending it. Now they make so much stuff that I’ve lost track and lost a bit of interest. But one thing I still have is this kind of upgraded fart gun that makes a fart sound when you fire it and releases a vapor that smells like banana. I love that. It’s really cool.
Minions & Monsters is in UK cinemas now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the interview with Pierre Coffin covering the topics you mentioned
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q Did Pierre Coffin really say a female Minion would be the start of the end
A Yes In the interview he joked that adding a female Minion would be too complicated and would ruin the simplicity of the characters He said it would be the start of the end for the franchise
Q What does Minion language actually mean Is it just gibberish
A Its a mix of real languages and nonsense sounds Pierre Coffin who voices them says he just makes up sounds that feel right for the emotion Its not a real language but it has consistent patterns
Q What are creepy memes of Minions
A These are fanmade images or videos that twist the cute Minions into something scary or disturbing like putting them in dark horrorstyle scenes Pierre Coffin finds them hilarious but admits they show the internets dark side
Q Is it true that bananas fart in the Minion movies
A Yes In Despicable Me 2 and Minions theres a running gag where bananas make a farting sound when theyre peeled Pierre Coffin says its a stupid childish joke that he loves because it makes kids laugh
Advanced BehindtheScenes Questions
Q Why is Pierre Coffin so against adding a female Minion
A He believes the Minions charm comes from their childlike genderless simplicity Introducing a female version would require defining their biology relationships and social dynamicswhich he thinks would overcomplicate the joke and ruin their universal appeal
Q How does Pierre Coffin actually create the Minion language for each scene
A He records his own voice improvising sounds based on the emotion He then layers in real words from different languages but only if they sound funny in the moment Theres no script for the language
