Pierre Coffin | |
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Born | Pierre-Louis Padang Coffin 16 March 1967 |
Occupation(s) | Film director, voice actor, animator |
Years active | 1993–present |
Known for | Voice of the Minions in the Despicable Me franchise |
Children | 2 |
Parent(s) | Yves Coffin Nh. Dini |
Signature | |
Pierre-Louis Padang Coffin (born 16 March 1967) [1] is a French film director, voice actor, and animator best known for co-directing four films in the Despicable Me franchise and being the primary voice of the Minions, which won him the Kids Family Award at the 10th Seiyu Awards. [2]
Coffin was born on 16 March 1967 in France to Nh. Dini, an Indonesian novelist and Yves Coffin, a French diplomat. He has a sister, Marie-Claire. During his childhood, they often moved across Asia, living in Cambodia and Japan, before settling in a Parisian suburb in the 1970s. Growing up, their father forbade them watching television, considering it too passive. Instead, Coffin drew, read and listened to music a lot. Although he had never considered a career in the arts, some talented friends of his, who were better at drawing than he, inspired him to work on improving his skills. [3]
Between 1985 and 1988, he studied cinema at the Paris-Sorbonne University. While attending his military service, he withdrew to take the entrance exam for the Gobelins animation school in Paris. Passing, he studied there the 2D course from 1990 to 1993. [4] Then he moved to Amblin, the 2D London-based facility, where he worked for one year as a junior animator on the Steven Spielberg-executive-produced We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story . [3] He then started as a freelance animator in the French CGI studio Ex Machina where he worked as an animator and eventually animation supervisor. Pierre Coffin's directorial career began with a short film named Pings in 1997. [4] He then started to collaborate by doing commercials with Passion Pictures Paris and Mac Guff. He created the characters Pat & Stan for the titular TF1 TV series. [5] In 2010 he completed, with Chris Renaud, the feature CGI-animated movie Despicable Me for Universal.
Coffin directed Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 , with Renaud, Despicable Me 3 and the Despicable Me spin-off, Minions with Kyle Balda. [6] In which he also served as the voice of various Minions. Coffin recorded several different dubs of the Minion voices for Minions in order to better appeal to different national markets, mixing in varying local words depending on the country. [7]
Coffin is currently developing two webseries for Illumination that will debut on TikTok and later on YouTube, titled Who's Who and Bones Story. [8]
Coffin has two children. [3]
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Actor | Voice role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1993 | We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story | No | No | No | No | Inbetween Artist | |
2003 | Gary's Day | Yes | No | No | No | Short film | |
2010 | Despicable Me [9] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Tim the Minion, Bob the Minion, Mark the Minion, Phil the Minion, Stuart the Minion, The Minions | |
Home Makeover | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Minions | Short film included on Despicable Me DVD and Blu-ray | |
Orientation Day | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |||
Banana | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
2011 | Brad & Gary [10] [11] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Brad | Short film |
2013 | Despicable Me 2 [9] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Kevin the Minion, Bob the Minion, Stuart the Minion, Additional Minions, Evil Minions, The Minions | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Nominated - Annie Award for Voice Acting in a Feature Production |
2015 | Minions [9] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Kevin the Minion, Bob the Minion, Stuart the Minion, The Minions | Nominated - Annie Award for Voice Acting in a Feature Production |
2017 | Despicable Me 3 [12] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Mel, The Minions and Museum Director | |
2022 | Minions: The Rise of Gru [13] | No | No | No | Yes | Kevin the Minion, Bob the Minion, Stuart the Minion, Otto the Minion, The Minions | |
2022 | Minions & More Volume 1'' [14] | Yes | No | No | Yes | Kevin the Minion, Bob the Minion, Stuart the Minion, The Minions | Debuted on Netflix |
2024 | Despicable Me 4 | No | No | Executive | Yes | The Minions |
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2004–2010 | Pat & Stan | Yes | Yes | No | Creator |
Mac Guff is a French visual effects company based in Los Angeles, United States, Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France, where it is headquartered. Mac Guff specializes in the creation of computer graphics for commercials, music videos and feature films. 270 graphic designers, VFX supervisors and producers, computer engineers, and administrators are usually working on over 100 million files. In mid-2011, the company was split in two, and the animation department was acquired by Illumination Entertainment. The new company was named Illumination Mac Guff and has capital worth 3.2 million euro.
Chris Renaud is an American designer, storyboard artist, director, producer and voice actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2006 animated short No Time for Nuts, which featured the character Scrat from the computer-animated Ice Age films. His most popular work are the Despicable Me films, including 1 and 2, which he co-directed with Pierre Coffin. Along with Coffin, he also co-created and lent his voice to the Minions.
Despicable Me is a 2010 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The first feature film from Illumination Entertainment, it was directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin and produced by Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy, and John Cohen, from a screenplay by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, which was in turn based on an original story "Evil Me" by Sergio Pablos. Despicable Me stars the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Miranda Cosgrove, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, and Julie Andrews. The film follows Gru, a longtime supervillain who adopts three orphan girls to use as pawns in a villainous scheme but reluctantly develops an emotional attachment to them.
Illumination, formerly known as Illumination Entertainment, is an American animation studio founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007 and is a division of Universal Pictures, a division of Comcast through its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal; Meledandri produces the films, while Universal finances and distributes them. The studio is best known for creating the Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing franchises, as well as the adaptations of Dr. Seuss' books The Lorax and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; and Nintendo video games, starting with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The Minions, characters from the Despicable Me series, are the mascots of the studio.
Christopher Meledandri is an American film producer and founder and CEO of Illumination. He previously served as President of 20th Century Fox Animation, and has worked as the producer for the film series of Ice Age, Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets and Sing. In 2021, he joined Nintendo's board of directors after working with the video game company on The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Despicable Me 2 is a 2013 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The sequel to Despicable Me (2010), it was directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and written by the writing team of Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It stars the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, and Ken Jeong. The film follows retired supervillain Gru as he is recruited by secret agent Lucy Wilde to investigate the theft of a powerful mutagen by El Macho, a supervillain who seeks to achieve world domination.
Despicable Me Minion Mayhem is an animated simulator ride attraction located at Universal Studios Florida, Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal Studios Japan, and Universal Studios Beijing, as well as upcoming to Universal Studios Singapore. The attraction is based on Universal Pictures and Illumination's animated film Despicable Me (2010) and its franchise. While it is an opening day attraction in Beijing, it replaced Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast in Florida, T2-3D: Battle Across Time in Hollywood, Back to the Future: The Ride in Japan and Madagascar: A Crate Adventure in Singapore.
Despicable Me is an American media franchise created by Sergio Pablos and Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It centers on a former supervillain turned secret agent named Gru and his yellow-colored Minions. The franchise is produced by Illumination and distributed by its parent company Universal Pictures.
Minions is a 2015 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The film is a prequel to Despicable Me (2010) and the third installment overall in the film series of the same name. Directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and written by Brian Lynch, Minions stars the voices of Coffin as the Minions, Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, and Geoffrey Rush as the narrator. In the film, the Minions search for their replaceable evil master after accidentally killing all of those in history.
Despicable Me 3 is a 2017 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to Despicable Me 2 (2013), and the third main and fourth overall installment in the Despicable Me franchise. It was directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, co-directed by production and character designer Eric Guillon, and produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, from a screenplay by the writing team of Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It stars the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Coffin, Miranda Cosgrove, Steve Coogan, Jenny Slate, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel, and Julie Andrews. In the film, Gru teams up with his long-lost twin brother Dru to stop Balthazar Bratt, a former child actor of the 1980s, from destroying Hollywood after his show was canceled years ago.
Minions are an all-male species of fictional yellow creatures that appear in Illumination's Despicable Me franchise. They are characterized by their childlike behavior and their language, which is largely unintelligible.
Illumination Studios Paris is a French animated feature production company owned by Illumination, a division of Universal Pictures. Based in Paris, France, the company was created in 2011 as part of Universal's purchase deal of the animation arm of French animation and VFX company Mac Guff. It is responsible for the animation on Illumination's feature-length animated films and associated short films, most notably the Despicable Me franchise.
The Secret Life of Pets is a 2016 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. It was directed by Chris Renaud, co-directed by Yarrow Cheney, and produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, from a screenplay written by Brian Lynch and the writing team of Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. The film stars the voices of Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, Steve Coogan, and Albert Brooks.
Kyle Balda is an American animator and film director, best known for co-directing the Illumination films The Lorax (2012), with Chris Renaud; Minions (2015) and Despicable Me 3 (2017), with Pierre Coffin; and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), with Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val. He previously worked as an animator for Industrial Light & Magic before moving to Pixar where he worked on three of their films.
Felonious Gru, alternatively spelled as Felonius Gru and typically referred to simply as Gru, is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Despicable Me film series. Voiced by American actor Steve Carell, he has appeared in all five films in the series. Gru is a grouchy, quick-witted and cynical former supervillain, who serves as a secret agent in order to fight other supervillains.
Janet Healy is a film producer whose films include Illumination's Despicable Me animated series and other animated films by the studio.
Minions: The Rise of Gru, also known as Minions 2, is a 2022 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to Minions (2015), a prequel to Despicable Me (2010), and the fifth entry overall in the Despicable Me franchise. The film was directed by Kyle Balda, co-directed by Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val, and produced by Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy and Chris Renaud, from a screenplay written by Matthew Fogel, and a story by Fogel and Brian Lynch. It features Steve Carell reprising his role as Gru and Pierre Coffin as the Minions, along with Russell Brand and Julie Andrews reprising their respective roles as Dr. Nefario and Gru's mother. New cast members include Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, and Alan Arkin. Additionally, Will Arnett and Steve Coogan reprise their roles as Mr. Perkins and Silas Ramsbottom. In the film, an eleven-year-old Gru plans to become a supervillain with the help of his Minions, which leads to a showdown with a malevolent team, the Vicious 6.
Despicable Me 4 is an upcoming American animated comedy film produced by Illumination and distributed by Universal Pictures. It will serve as the sequel to Despicable Me 3 (2017), the fourth main installment, and the sixth installment overall in the Despicable Me franchise. The film is directed by Chris Renaud, co-directed by Patrick Delage, produced by Chris Meledandri and Brett Hoffman, and written by Mike White and Ken Daurio. It stars the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Joey King, Sofía Vergara, Miranda Cosgrove, Chloe Fineman, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Coogan.