Production Notes & Screen Credits - SYE Publicity

live-action and animated films that would be led
by the successful filmmaker.
Meledandri, who had been an executive at Fox
for 13 years, became founding president of 20 th
Century Fox Animation during his tenure at the
studio. He headed that division for eight years,
amassing more than $2 billion in global box-office
revenue for the studio. The producer oversaw Fox’s
1998 acquisition of the East Coast-based, small
visual-effects house Blue Sky Studios and its
transformation into the studio’s successful CGanimation
arm, which employs more than 250
artists. While there, Meledandri also supervised
and/or executive produced such blockbusters as
Robots, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Simpsons
Movie and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Offers Meledandri about the transition: “I
found that I could not turn away from the extraordinary
opportunity that Universal offered me: the
entrepreneurial aspect, the excitement about a new
company, the breadth of the production mandate to
include all forms of animation, as well as live
action, and the studio’s ideas about movies—
specifically their commitment to quality, as well as
their ideas about how to market movies in an
increasingly competitive marketplace.”
ABOUTTHE
PRODUCTION
So Despicable:
The Project Begins
“The original concept of Despicable Me was pitched
to me by Sergio Pablos, who is a Spanish animator based
with a small animation studio in Spain,” explains Chris
Meledandri. “We immediately knew that screenwriters
Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio were the team to write the
screenplay.” The writers had worked with the producer
on the global hit Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, and
Meledandri felt they had just the sensibility to bring
Sergio Pablos’ original story to life.
Paul and Daurio had navigated intricate animated
worlds before with Meledandri. In their last film
together, they gave life to Dr. Seuss’ beloved character
Horton, telling the story of a gentle elephant
who hears a faint cry for help from a dust mote that’s
floated past. The film, directed by Jimmy Hayward
and Steve Martino, was an enormous hit and solidified
the two as comedy scribes. For their newest
project, they elaborated upon Pablos’ idea of one of
His minions are in awe of Gru’s plan.
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