While browsing Variety.com, I came across an article on Illumination Entertainment and their first CG film, “Despicable Me”.  For those of you not familiar, Illumination Entertainment is the CG animation division of Universal.  Almost two years ago, Universal convinced Chris Melandri, former head of 20th Century Fox’ animation division, to run this new company.

The logline for Despicable Me goes something like this:  Groo, a deplorable man who masterminds the mother of all heists when he plots to steal the moon. Egged on by an evil mother, Groo finds one obstacle in his way: a trio of orphan girls who temporarily come under his care and won’t leave.

Chris was at least partially responsible for turning Blue Sky into the company it is today.  He is more than qualified to do the same for Universal.  What isn’t quite clear to me, is whether Illumination Entertainment will develop the projects and outsource the production, or form a new animation studio in LA.  Hopefully someone can enlighten us shortly.

If you’d like to read the Variety article, you can find it here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are already aware that Universal has jumped into the CG feature game with a co-production with Framestore to make “Tale of Despereaux”.  I’m not sure what the deal is between these companies, but I wonder if Universal will continue to hook up with other companies like this, now that Illumination Ent seems to be rolling.

UPDATE: I did a little digging and it appears that IE will have a core team in LA and most likely outsource the bulk of the production work.

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