Scarlet Overkill & The Cash Cow

Scarlet Overkill Blues

This entry stems from my ongoing frustration with a general lack of Scarlet Overkill everything beyond her appearance in MINIONS, so feel free to stop here if you're not keen about reading additional commentary concerning the behind-the-scenes evolution of MINIONS and its cash cow nature. I'm frustrated over getting awesome characters like the Overkills in just a small portion of a film when I would have rather watched a whole movie about them and am still processing how the heck this surreal situation happened.

What follows is the result of me Googling stuff about MINIONS and its Illumination Entertainment creative team (mainly for the purpose of finding Scarlet Overkill content, which sometimes leads to various rabbit holes). Some of the public information about the film's evolution conflicts with one another, but I finally found a source that clears up some of the confusion. My efforts aren't about digging up dirt on Illumination; rather, I've been trying to get a handle on the film industry culture surrounding Scarlet Overkill's creation. Like her character, it strikes me as fascinating, messy, and problematic.

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It's general knowledge that MINIONS was a collaborative effort between Illumination Entertainment CEO Chris Meledandri, screenwriter Brian Lynch, and co-directors Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda. But to hear the Illumination team spin the development tale in various interviews, they can't seem to keep track of who came up with what, apart from the established fact that Lynch cooked up the Villain-Con idea.

"'In making this prequel, we began by asking the question that has been asked of us thousands of times: Where do the Minions come from?'" - Chris Meledandri

And from the same article:

"'We didn't set out to give the Minions their own movie, the Minions demanded it." – Chris Meledandri (http://www.femail.com.au/sandra-bullock-minions.htm)

I don't buy this narrative, i.e., that Illumination & Universal lacked control over this project. I'd wager that once the Minions caught fire among fans, either Meledandri or his boss at NBCUniversal ordered the MINIONS cash cow simply because that's what studios often do. Let's be real: the need for profit demanded MINIONS.

Anyway, here are more article and interview quotes chronicling MINIONS' evolution. I bolded certain parts throughout for emphasis.

"Lynch shares the reason why he wanted the Minions tale to be a 1969 prequel..." (http://www.channelguidemag.com/tv-news/2015/12/08/vod-spotlight-the-making-of-minions/)

"...the Illumination creative team asked Brian Lynch if he'd be interested in writing a stand-alone film about the Minions...Brian Lynch shares the reason he accepted the challenge and why he wanted their tale to be a 1969 prequel to the events that began in 2010" (http://www.femail.com.au/sandra-bullock-minions.htm)

"Pierre Coffin:...Brian Lynch, the script writer, had the initial idea about Villain-Con and then Kyle and I thought it would be cool to show the origin of Minions." (http://blogs.indiewire.com/animationscoop/immersed-in-movies-talking-minions-with-directors-pierre-coffin-and-kyle-balda-20151207)

And this:

"Who came up with the initiative for the movie? Was it Universal or was it you?

PC: It was Brian Lynch, the scriptwriter, coming up to Chris Meledandri and pitching him the story. Like "I've got this idea, what if there was this thing called Villain-Con, the equivalent of Comic Con but in the evil world? So you'd have these two parallel worlds, but the normal world doesn't know about the evil world..." So he came up with that concept, and when they pitched it out to us there was this whole thing going on, like "oh, we should make a prequel", "we should show the Minions in time", "oh, maybe we show them being around forever and they just want to serve the greatest master around, just to arrive at a very natural point where maybe they meet Gru at the end... I don't know". I remember Chris Meledandri saying "oh man, that whole thing in the past, we're gonna make twenty minutes of it". And I said "twenty minutes, really? Because that's gonna feel weird when we get into the real story."" (http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/06/interview-directors-pierre-coffin-and-kyle-balda-talk-minions.html)