The Minions are everywhere! There’s no getting away from them, the cute little yellow critters from Despicable Me have invaded pop culture over the last few years and now they’ve got a film all to themselves.
Minions, set in the years before Gru, follows Stuart, Kevin and Bob as they cross paths with villainess Scarlett Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) and get swept up in her plot for world domination. To mark the release of Minions, we’ve rounded up some fun facts, figures and trivia on the characters and their movie outings below…
1. Who voices Kevin, Bob , Stu and the Minions? It’s none other than Pierre Coffin, the French animator who co-directed both Despicable Me films and Minions. For the latter he reportedly voices 899 different Minion characters.
2. French art director Eric Guillon is creator of the Minions. He came up with the concept for the scene-stealers on the first Despicable Me, and the creatures are now the official mascots for studio Illumination Entertainment.
3. The average Minion stands at 105cm in height.
4. The Minions were originally envisioned as giant “Orc-like brutes”, but over time they got smaller and smaller in a bid to make their master Gru more sympathetic. “The easy way [to do that] was to actually have him surrounded by incompetence,” Coffin said of the yellow critters.
5. The Minions’ language may sound like gibberish, but many of their phrases will be recognisable. “Banana” is banana (natch), Bapples is apples, para tú is rough Spanish meaning “for you” and “gelato” is ice cream. Each word in “minion-ese” translates to an actual word.
6. The poster for Despicable Me 2 apparently contains more than 10,400 individual Minions.
7. Bob suffers from heterochromia iridum, making his eyes two different colours. He’s in good company – David Bowie, Kate Bosworth and Mila Kunis and also have a similar eye discolouration.
8. The “evil” purple Minions were created with a PX-41 serum and were designed to be indestructible. They still share their yellow compatriots’ love of bananas and getting up to no good, though!
9. Short film Orientation Day suggests that the Minions were spawned from a single strand of mutated DNA that transformed into one-cell organisms.
10. The Despicable Me movies have grossed more than $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. 2013’s sequel was the third-highest grossing film of that year behind Frozen and Iron Man 3.
11. The most-viewed Minions video on the web is a ‘best of’ compilation that’s racked up 58.2 million YouTube plays. Close behind it on 58.1 million is a 14-minute rendition of ‘Banana’ to the tune of Beach Boys’ ‘Barbara Ann’.
12. In total, seven short films featuring the Minions have been released: Orientation Day, Home Makeover, Brady & Gary, Minion Mayhem 3D, Training Wheels, Puppy, Panic in the Mailroom.
13. The Minions have two Oscar nominations under their belts – both for Despicable Me 2. The film nabbed a nom for Best Animated Film and Best Original Song for Pharrell’s ‘Happy’.
14. The Minions love to croon, and as such they’ve sang versions of ‘I Swear’, ‘YMCA’ and ‘Barbara Ann’ across the movies. YouTube is rife with fan-made covers, including ‘All About That Bass’ ‘Uptown Funk’ and ‘Let It Go’.
15. Despicable Me spinoff merchandise is a lucrative industry in itself. Available to own are a Fart Blaster gun and goggles.
Watch the trailer here:
Opening across the Philippines on July 08, “Minions” is distributed by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.
Via: DigitalSpy