Hits Keep Coming

Illumination Entertainment continues to fire on all cylinders:

Illumination’s Despicable Me series of films has surpassed the Shrek movies to become the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time worldwide. A $21.2M international weekend on Despicable Me 3 has pushed the franchise to a $3.528B global total for Gru and the Minions. That tops the Shrek stable of five pics (including Puss In Boots) at $3.51B global. ...

I met Chris Meledandri (IE's daddy) exactly once. He was a Fox exec at the time, and asked me about staffing for Fox Animation Phoenix. I gave him my input, which he didn't take (no doubt a wise move).

Mr. Meledandri was then at the beginning of a storied animation career, heading up Fox's new animation division. 20th Century Fox's initial foray into theatrical animated features began with faltering steps (Anastasia, Titan A.E.) but soon hit a muscular stride with the CG animated Ice Age franchise and the plethora of Blue Sky Studios animated features that followed. Mr. Meledandri was in charge of all that.

For the last several years Chris Meledandri has created blockbusters for Universal/Comcast. He rivals John Lasseter as the most successful producer of long-form cartoons in the history of animation.

Not too shabby, especially when you consider that he began his movie career in live-action, serving as President of Dawn Steel Pictures while it was housed at Disney.