The Secret Life of Pets | |
---|---|
Created by | |
Original work | The Secret Life of Pets (2016) |
Owner | Universal Pictures (via Illumination) |
Years | 2016–present |
Films and television | |
Film(s) |
|
Short film(s) |
|
Games | |
Video game(s) | The Secret Life of Pets: Unleashed |
Audio | |
Soundtrack(s) | |
Miscellaneous | |
Theme park attraction(s) | The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash! |
The Secret Life of Pets is an American media franchise created by Illumination. Directed by Chris Renaud, the franchise stars the voices of Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Tara Strong, Hannibal Buress, and Bobby Moynihan, among others. The first film, The Secret Life of Pets , was released on July 8, 2016 and received positive reviews from critics. The second film, The Secret Life of Pets 2 , was released on June 7, 2019 in the US and received mixed reviews from critics. The series has grossed $1.3 billion so far.
The films follow a group of domesticated house pets who embark on various adventures outside the comfort of their apartment complex.
Max's luck changes when his owner Katie brings home a new dog named Duke. They have to put their differences aside when they get lost in New York in order to stop a rebellious group of abandoned pets and return home.
Max and Duke's owner Katie now has a child named Liam, which causes Max to become excessively protective, but a road trip to the countryside will change his mind. Meanwhile, a reformed Snowball helps a white tiger named Hu find refuge from an abusive circus owner.
In March 2022, in an interview on the podcast The Gary and Kenny Show, Chris Meledandri, CEO of Illumination, stated that a third film is in development. [1]
Included as a mini-movie on The Secret Life of Pets' home media release, the short focuses around Norman from the film as he wanders the vents of Max's apartment and watches various scenarios of the residents.
Included as the second mini-movie on The Secret Life of Pets' home media release, it features a world of anthropomorphic sausages in which the Mayor shows a little sausage named Timmy how great it is to be a weenie.
Included as a mini-movie on The Secret Life of Pets 2's home media release, the plot focuses on the character Gidget imagining herself as a superhero and saving Max from an army of squirrels. [2]
A free-to-play mobile game developed by Electronic Arts, titled The Secret Life of Pets: Unleashed, was released in summer 2016. It was a match-3 game which featured the characters as one has its own level. In the game the players could combine different toys to earn points. The game was removed from the App Store and Google Play Store on May 22, 2017, the same day as Minions Paradise .
In April 2019, Universal Studios Hollywood announced a new dark ride attraction entitled The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash! which was set to open on March 27, 2020, [3] [4] but the opening was postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [5] The attraction eventually opened on April 16, 2021.
The ride's queue is themed after Katie's apartment, and features animatronics of Max and Duke explaining the ride's plot, which involves the park guests, now "transformed into puppies," getting ready to be adopted. The ride itself is a highly immersive dark ride with a wide assortment of special effects and over 60 animatronics of characters from the franchise. Riders exit through the gift shop, themed to a pet adoption center. Outside the building's exit, guests can chat with a live-voiced animatronic of Snowball, similar to the meet-and-greet animatronic Donkey from Shrek that is located in several Universal Parks. [6]
Film | Release Date | Box Office Gross | All Time Ranking | Budget | Ref. | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Domestic | Foreign | Worldwide | Domestic | Worldwide | ||||
The Secret Life of Pets | July 8, 2016 | $368,623,860 | $507,074,301 | $875,698,161 | 46 | 67 | $75 million | [7] |
The Secret Life of Pets 2 | June 7, 2019 | $158,980,250 | $272,184,209 | $431,164,459 | 336 | 293 | $80 million | [8] |
Total | $527,604,110 | $779,258,510 | $1,306,862,620 | $155 million | [9] |
Film | Critical | Public | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic | CinemaScore | PostTrak | |
The Secret Life of Pets | 70% (240 reviews) [10] | 61 (39 reviews) [11] | A− [12] | 85% [13] |
The Secret Life of Pets 2 | 60% (164 reviews) [14] | 55 (26 reviews) [15] | A− [12] | — |
Characters | Films | Short films | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
The Secret Life of Pets | The Secret Life of Pets 2 | Norman Television | Super Gidget | |
Max | Louis C.K. | Patton Oswalt | Patton Oswalt | |
Duke | Eric Stonestreet | |||
Snowball | Kevin Hart | |||
Gidget | Jenny Slate | Jenny Slate | ||
Chloe | Lake Bell | |||
Pops | Dana Carvey | |||
Buddy | Hannibal Buress | |||
Mel | Bobby Moynihan | Bobby Moynihan | ||
Katie | Ellie Kemper | |||
Norman | Chris Renaud | |||
Sweetpea | Tara Strong | |||
Tiberius | Albert Brooks | |||
Ozone | Steve Coogan | |||
Tattoo | Michael Beattie | |||
Molly | Kiely Renaud | |||
Daisy | Tiffany Haddish | |||
Liam | Henry Lynch | |||
Rooster | Harrison Ford | |||
Sergei | Nick Kroll | |||
Lead Wolf | Michael Beattie | |||
Cat Lady | Meredith Salenger | |||
Chuck | Pete Holmes | |||
Harold | Danny Mann | |||
Marilyn | Lori Alan | |||
Infestor | Gilbert Gottfried |
Role | Main films | |
---|---|---|
The Secret Life of Pets | The Secret Life of Pets 2 | |
Directed by | Chris Renaud | |
Co-director: Yarrow Cheney | Co-director: Jonathan del Val | |
Produced by | Chris Meledandri Janet Healy | |
Written by | Cinco Paul Ken Daurio Brian Lynch | Brian Lynch |
Music by | Alexandre Desplat | |
Edited by | Ken Schretzmann | Tiffany Hillkurtz |
Production Company | Illumination | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures | |
Universal Studios Hollywood is a film studio and theme park in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. About 70% of the studio lies within the unincorporated county island known as Universal City while the rest lies within the city limits of Los Angeles, California. It is one of the oldest and most famous Hollywood film studios still in use. Its official marketing headline is "The Entertainment Capital of LA". It was initially created to offer tours of the real Universal Studios sets and is the first of many full-fledged Universal Studios theme park resorts located across the world.
Despicable Me is a 2010 American animated comedy film produced by Universal Pictures, Illumination Entertainment, and the SPA Studios, and distributed by Universal. The film had many firsts, including it being the first one of the franchise of the same name, the inaugural feature from Illumination, and the directorial debuts of Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin. It was produced by Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy, and John Cohen, from a screenplay by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, based on a story by Sergio Pablos. Despicable Me stars the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Jack McBrayer, and Julie Andrews. The film follows Felonious 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.
The decade of the 2010s in film involved many significant developments in the motion picture industry as Disney towered all over its competitors. The studio's titles occupy exactly half of the top 50 highest-grossing movies at the worldwide box office of these ten years with solely one of those entries not reaching a billion dollars and the only three features on the entire list to cross the $2 billion mark, while Universal and Warner Bros. share the distant second place at eight titles each. Furthermore, non-Disney films managed to become the top-grosser of a year merely twice during the decade. This domination culminated in the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney.
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. Meledandri also collaborates with Illumination's corporate sibling DreamWorks Animation on reviving the Shrek franchise.
Despicable Me 2 is a 2013 American animated comedy film produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, and distributed by Universal. It is the sequel to Despicable Me (2010) and the second installment in the Despicable Me franchise. The film 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.
Universal's Superstar Parade was a parade at Universal Studios Florida. It was first announced at a live webcast on January 25, 2012. The parade included characters, floats, and themed-vehicles based on Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me and Hop films, as well as Paramount and Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, and Go, Diego, Go! television series. Each section of the parade had a unique mix of performers, from aerialists to drummers to acrobatics. The parade was notable for having “show stops” in the New York and Hollywood sections of the park where an elaborate choreographed dance routine would take place. Leading up to the parade, each individual unit would make appearances throughout the day for smaller shows and meet-n-greets. The parade debuted on May 8, 2012, as part of Universal Orlando's "Year To Be Here".
Despicable Me is an American media franchise created by Sergio Pablos, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It centers on a former supervillain turned secret agent named Gru, his adoptive daughters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes, 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 Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, and distributed by Universal. The film is a prequel to Despicable Me (2010) and the third installment overall in the Despicable Me franchise. 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 titular beings, 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 Universal Pictures and Illumination, and distributed by Universal. It is the sequel to Despicable Me 2 (2013), the third main installment, and the fourth overall installment in the Despicable Me franchise. The film 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.
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The Secret Life of Pets is a 2016 American animated comedy film produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, and distributed by Universal. 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.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 is a 2019 American animated comedy film produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination, and distributed by Universal. It is the sequel to The Secret Life of Pets (2016), and the second feature film in the franchise of the same name. It was directed by Chris Renaud, co-directed by Jonathan del Val, produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and written by Brian Lynch. The film features the voices of Patton Oswalt, Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Lake Bell, Nick Kroll, Dana Carvey, Ellie Kemper, Renaud, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, and Harrison Ford.
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