Illumination Entertainment
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Film |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder | Chris Meledandri |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, United States |
|
Key people
|
Janet Healy Eddie Egan Natalie Fischer (COO) |
| Products | Animated films |
| Owner |
Chris Meledandri NBCUniversal |
|
Number of employees
|
35 (2012) 300 (Illumination Mac Guff) (2012) |
| Subsidiaries | Illumination Mac Guff |
| Website | Official website |
Illumination Entertainment is an American animation film production company, founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007. It is owned by Meledandri and Universal Studios, a division of NBCUniversal, with Universal fully financing and owning all the films. The company is best known for the Despicable Me franchise and the films The Secret Life of Pets and Sing. The Minions, characters from the Despicable Me films, are the studio's official mascots.
The studio's highest-grossing films are Minions (2015), which has grossed $1.159 billion worldwide; Despicable Me 2 (2013), which has grossed $970.8 million worldwide; and The Secret Life of Pets (2016), which grossed $875.5 million worldwide.
Meledandri left his post as President of 20th Century Fox Animation in early 2007 where he supervised or executive produced movies including Ice Age (2002), its sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), Robots (2005), and Horton Hears a Who! (2008). After leaving, he founded Illumination Entertainment. By 2008, a deal was announced positioning Illumination as NBCUniversal’s family entertainment arm that would produce one to two films a year starting in 2010. As an independent production company, Illumination retains creative control and Universal exclusively distributes the films. During the summer 2011, Illumination acquired the animation department of the French animation and visual effects studio Mac Guff, which animated Despicable Me (2010) and The Lorax (2012), and formed Illumination Mac Guff.
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