The Minions Get Their Own Movie

Even before it opened, Despicable Me 2 has already been getting much buzz and hype. The reason behind it is the popularity of the funny little, gibberish-muttering creatures featured in the movie (both in the first movie and the new one) known as the Minions. Now, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures has announced that they will be making a spin-off movie that centers only on those creatures, appropriately and simply entitled MINIONS.  [read the full article after the jump]

Despicable Me director Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda (director of The Lorax) will helm the film, with writer Brian Lynch (Hop, Puss in Boots) on the screenplay. The team has begun working on this project as soon as they got done with DM2, with a target release date set on December 19, 2014. The film will be in 3-D.

Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock will lead the voice cast of characters as the stylish and bad-ass Scarlett Overkill, the worlds reigning super-villain of the 1960s. Jon Hamm will voice Herb Overkill, Scarlet's husband and inventor.

In this spin-off movie, the Minions are presented in an origin story that showcases their unpredictable personality and physicality, and pairs them with equally memorable human characters. As it turns out, the Minions have existed since the beginning of time. They have evolved from single (yellow) cell organisms into the familiar beings we know, and they live for a collective purpose: to seek out and serve the most despicable master they can find. After their ineptitude destroys all their masters, including T. Rex and Dracula, they decide to isolate themselves from the world and start a new life in Antarctica. Sometime in the 1960s, the lack of a master drives them into depression, so Kevin the Minion and two other volunteers set out to find a new one. They arrive at a villain convention, where they compete for the right to be henchmen for Scarlet Overkill, a stylish and ambitious villain determined to dominate the world and become the first female super-villain.

The Minions hype is really strong. Here in the Philippines, the McDonald's food chain's Despicable Me 2 Happy Meal toy promo had immediately got sold out before the movie opened. Expect a flood of stuffed toys and other merchandise to flood the market. In the US, Universal has already opened an amusement park ride centering on The Minions at Universal Studios Florida. Universal will surely be milking this hype while it's hot.