The Despicable Me franchise has spawned six movies including the Minions films. Despicable Me 4 is the latest entry and follows Gru (Steve Carell) and his family as they go into hiding from an old rival known as Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), a half-man and half-cockroach villain. The film has grossed over $850 million at the worldwide box office and is currently still in theaters. For those who want to watch it at home, it’s now available on digital download with a DVD and Blu-ray release in September.

And if that’s not enough news for you, it’s been reported that Minions 3 will be coming to theaters in June 2027.

Nerd Reactor had the chance to chat with Despicable Me 4 director Chris Renaud, who also helmed the first and second Despicable Me films.

“What I wanted to put in this movie are things that definitely I’ve loved over the course of this 15-16 year journey for me personally,” Renaud tells Nerd Reactor. “So it was an opportunity to kind of revisit some things that have been in this universe and that give us an opportunity to play with those things and give the audience an opportunity to maybe see some things they haven’t seen in a while. It’s always fun. I always loved when I was a kid, things that were like in the comics, they’d call it a crossover, or they’d have ‘what if’ or characters would come together. And it’s always fun and gratifying because it suggests a world bigger than the movie itself. And I always think that’s a fun element for an audience to experience.”

Renaud has a background in comic books including working for both Marvel Comics and DC Comics. So it’s no surprise to see inspirations from the superhero world making it into the film.

“I was in comics in the mid-90s, and of course, crossover storylines were huge then, particularly,” the director recalled. “And I contributed to some of the storylines in DC that sort of would go across multiple titles and all that kind of thing. And I even did a lot of trading cards for Marvel versus DC. So, All this universe stuff that everyone talks about now was something that I was working on a few decades ago. I’m a fan of that stuff myself, so it’s always fun to be able to contribute to that.

“And in this one, Despicable Me 4, we also got an opportunity to play with the minions as superheroes, which was something that we had talked about as far back as Despicable Me 2 when we were coming up with what the storyline was. Obviously in that film, we landed on the purple evil minions, but we were playing with ideas that they may have superpowers. And so this was a fun opportunity in this film to come back to that idea and sort of satisfy my love of the comics.”

As for the future of the Despicable Me franchise:

“I’m sure you saw the announcement for Minions 3, which is already being worked on, so that’s the next thing that’s in the pipeline,” Renaud explained. “There’s no real official like, ‘Oh, this is what it’s going to be.’ And this is because, again, we already have something we’re moving forward on for – I forget the release date – but a few years down the road. But I think there are a lot of places to go because there are fun parts about the Despicable Me world. It’s our world. They’re human, so you’re not as limited as you are with animals or mystical creatures, you know. So there’s a lot of a lot of places you can go.

“I always think of it like this, and I’ve said this in a few of these interviews: What you have to crack is the family dynamic or problem and the new villain, and if you can find an interesting answer to those two questions, then you probably have the makings of a movie. And of course, I would add to that as I haven’t said it, but I do think it’s a huge thing is ‘What are the minions doing?’ Because in this movie, when you have about a group of 100 characters, you’ve got to figure out what are they doing that doesn’t feel like it’s completely removed from the main story. So we’ve had them go to prison, obviously. In the second film, they were the evil minions, so they were kind of the narrative plot for the villain El Macho. And in this one, they became AVL agents and then super minions, so those three elements are the big parts that you’ve got to figure out. And if you can come up with satisfying answers to those three things, then yeah, you might have a movie on your hands.”

About Despicable Me 4

Synopsis: The first Despicable Me movie in seven years, Gru, the world’s favorite supervillain-turned-Anti-Villain League-agent, returns for an exciting, bold new era of Minions mayhem in Illumination’s Despicable Me 4.

Following the 2022 summer blockbuster phenomenon of Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru, which earned almost $1 billion worldwide, the biggest global animated franchise in history now begins a new chapter as Gru (Steve Carrell) and Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and their girls —Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Madison Polan)—welcome a new member to the Gru family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad.

Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) and his femme fatale girlfriend Valentina (Sofia Vergara), and the family is forced to go on the run.

The film features fresh new characters voiced by Joey King (Bullet Train), Stephen Colbert (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) and Chloe Fineman (Saturday Night Live). Pierre Coffin returns as the iconic voice of the Minions and Steve Coogan returns as Silas Ramsbottom.

The film is directed by a co-creator of the Minions, Chris Renaud (Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets). The film is co-directed by Patrick Delage (animation director Sing 2 and The Secret Life of Pets 2) and written by Mike White (White Lotus) and Ken Daurio (Despicable Me films). The film is produced Chris Meledandri and Brett Hoffman.