Will there ever be a live-action Minions movie? “God, I hope not," says director

Even if you've never seen the Despicable Me movies, you know who the Minions are. They're yellow, they wear denim, they speak a silly gibberish language, they get into madcap slapstick hijinks. They were originally introduced as the henchmen for the villain Gru in the first Despicable Me movie in 2010, but have indisputably become the stars of the franchise; their first solo movie, 2015's Minions, made over a billion dollars at the box office. They're in commercials, on cereal boxes and in your home watching you right now. They are legion.

I'd never thought of the prospect of live-action Minions before, but director Chris Renaud — who's helmed three out of the four Despicable Me movies, including the new one that came out earlier this summer — was asked about that prospect during a chat with Film Hounds. Will we ever see the wacky yellow comedy machines in live-action? “God, I hope not," Renaud said. "That’s my answer.”

"If there were conversations like that, I haven’t been privy to them. But for me, what defines the world is that it is animated and it allows us to get away with what we get away with. Like locking a Minion in the vending machine, or you know, blowing up Gru when he attacks Vector. These are really cartoon ideas, like what would have been in a Bugs Bunny cartoon."

Renaud makes some good points, but this is a very trenchant question to ask in an age where Disney has made billions of dollars by taking its old classic animated movies and making them over in live-action. The next film to get this treatment will be Snow White, which comes out on March 31 of next year.

For the record, that trailer has 73k likes and nearly 900k dislikes, so there's some antipathy about the process of regurgitating classic animated movies into live-action form, at least online. But they tend to make bank, which is what matters to studios.

The Despicable Me and Minions movies are made by Universal, not Disney, but the same principle applies. I'd never thought of a live-action Minions thing until 20 minutes ago when I read Renaud's interview, but now I'm almost certain it will happen sooner or later. Your kids are going to love it. Your reaction is up to you.

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h/t The A.V. Club