Pierre Coffin is landing representation for the first time in a career that has already achieved bananas-level success.
The filmmaker has signed at WME for representation in all areas, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. This marks the first-ever reps for Coffin, who has earned Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for his work as the creator of the Minions and a driving creative force behind Illumination Entertainment‘s Despicable Me animated franchise.
WME will work with Coffin as he continues collaborating with Illumination and also looks to expand his pursuits to live-action, hybrid and other projects that go beyond animation. The Despicable Me franchise has surpassed $6 billion at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing animated franchise ever.
The Paris-based Coffin began his career as an animator with stops at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and French studio Ex Machina. His feature directorial debut came with the 2010 hit Despicable Me, as he and Chris Renaud co-directed the film that featured Steve Carell as the voice of supervillain Gru, who questions his path after adopting three girls.
That Universal Pictures film introduced the lovably diabolical Minions, with Coffin voicing the yellow characters and having devised their distinctive Minionese language. Coffin went on to co-direct the first two Despicable Me sequels and the 2015 spinoff movie Minions. Released in 2013, Despicable Me 2 earned Coffin an Oscar nomination for best animated feature.
After Despicable Me 3 hit theaters in 2017, Coffin told Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri that he was ready to set his sights beyond the franchise.
“I told him: I got to move on. I did my trilogy, my prequel — I’m good. I can help with the voices, no problem. But I want to move on,” Coffin told the Associated Press earlier this year. “I worked on separate things, but I always get pulled back by the Minions.”
Indeed, Coffin made his solo directorial debut with this summer’s Minions & Monsters, which collected $523 million at the global box office and stands as the best-reviewed installment in the franchise. The movie’s Old Hollywood setting reflects his passion for cinema and classic filmmaking.
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