Annecy 2026: Pierre Coffin returns with his Minions and his monsters [rencontre]

The director opened the 50th edition of the International Animated Film Festival today in Annecy, with a world premiere. For our “Facing the readers” section, Premiere introduced him to students from the EICAR school. Excerpts.

Sixteen years ago, Pierre Coffin presented in Annecy a first feature film which he did not know would propel him to the top of the world of animation. Despicable me was in fact the founding act of the Illumination studio and gave birth to a franchise that has grossed $5.6 billion, continuing to attract spectators from around the world. Coffin returns today to Annecy to open the 50th edition – a festival he knows well – with Minions and monsters.

This opening is symbolic in more than one way: Illumination, the studio of Chris Meledandri – also guest of honor this year – has maintained a continuous relationship with the festival since this first Despicable Me. This is the third time that a Minions has opened the festival. And the theme retained by the 50th edition, anime frissonsis timely: Coffin signs here an unbridled homage to the Hollywood of the 1920s and the B series of monsters that populated his childhood (from Harryhausen à Godzilla passing byThe Blob). It’s the meeting of Technicolor in the making and the Z-series kaijÅ«, but by the Minions and for the Minions! Suffice to say that disasters will fly in squadrons.

Before the projection on the giant screen this evening, we organized a meeting between Pierre Coffin and some students from the EICAR film school (Paris). Selected extracts (the full version of the interview will be read in the next issue of Premiere on newsstands June 24).

“Everything comes from 1920s Hollywood, including anime.”

[SAMUEL] Why did you choose the world of monsters and 1920s Hollywood for this new adventure?

The basic idea does not come from me – besides, to be completely honest, the initial pitch of my films rarely comes from me. Chris Meledandri called me one weekend. He knew that I didn’t want to make any more films with the Minions. I really wanted to move on. But he came up with this idea: “What if the Minions made a monster movie?” Since they don’t have a monster, they create one and it’s a disaster. Throughout the rest of the film, they try to correct their mistake… “I stopped listening to it after “Minions making a film” (laughs). I immediately loved the concept. All that remained was to set the time. The first Minionsit was the Swinging Sixties in London; for the Minions 2I had gone to San Francisco in the 1970s… There, returning to Hollywood in the 1920s allowed me to pay homage to the cinema of its origins. Everything comes from there, including the anime. It was Babylonc’était The Artistand more generally all the films that rocked my parents’ youth and which educated me too. I was like a kid.

“And suddenly, I see this super cute Blob drawn on the corner of a tablecloth…”

[SAMY] Was there a specific technical or artistic obstacle to this film?

Contrary to what some people think, it was not the black and white that was the most complicated to make, but the monsters. The three main creatures are named Howard, Phillips and Irene. Howard & Phillips is a tribute to HP Lovecraft. To tell you the truth, we have a graphic designer called François Launay who we nickname Goumi. For years, at every meeting I saw him drawing creatures in an old book, a bit like the grimoire from the film. His inspiration came from this literature and for example he drew a super cute Cthulhu. The character of Goumi comes from there. Howard and Phillips are his creatures. One day, on a corner of a tablecloth, he drew a blob with eyes: and it became Irene! Because of its simplicity, it was the hardest to animate. No animator could draw her by hand, frame by frame: her eyes, the movements she makes while rolling, the tentacles… everything had to be generated automatically by the machines. This character required a total of more than a year of development. And then there was the lighting. We wanted an old-fashioned look that would look as if the 1920s film was shot in the 1950s with color and backlighting. This too was very complex.

“Be careful, you say vagina en grec »

[MENDY] Minions have their own language. How does this concretely fit into writing a screenplay?

On the first film, we wrote directly in cute, and no one understood anything. Even I sometimes got lost. This time, I started writing, Brian came to join me afterwards, and I wrote their dialogues directly in English. As I recorded, I changed the dialogue to cute. Once I had the intention, once I knew what to say in terms of meaning, story, emotion of the character in the scene, then I switched to cute. In the translation, I keep words that everyone understands – Big Boss, movies– mixing Spanish, Italian, English. Universal International comes behind me and sends me Excel tables: “Be careful, there you say vagina in Greek. » I then spend three weeks redoing all the voices in all languages, except Chinese (don’t ask me why, I can’t do it). And then Big Boss becomes boss in Spanish, so I’m repeating. But it’s a totally mature process now.