Christopher Meledandri is an American film producer and the founder, CEO and owner of Illumination. He is best known as the producer of the Despicable Me franchise.
During his tenure, he produced ' and helped Fox become a major player in the world of animated feature films. In 1998 he led Fox's acquisition of fledgling visual effects/commercial house Blue Sky Studios, which he built into a successful producer of animated features. He oversaw the creative and business operations of Blue Sky, now Fox's wholly owned CGI studio. While at the studio, Meledandri supervised and/or executive produced movies including Ice Age, ', Robots, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who! He also produced two animated shorts, Gone Nutty and No Time for Nuts, both were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Illumination
Meledandri left as President of 20th Century Fox Animation in early 2007 and founded Illumination Entertainment, an all-audience film production company, co-owned by Universal Pictures, which fully finances and owns the films. In 2010 Illumination released its first film, Despicable Me,, and in 2011 Hop. Illumination released a film version of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, which continued the successful collaboration between Meledandri and Theodor Geisel's widow, Audrey. He also produced the franchise spin-off featuring the Minions, Minions. In January 2018, Nintendo announced during a fiscal meeting that Illumination would be developing an animated Mario film and that Meledandri will co-produce the film with Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.
On April 28, 2016, NBCUniversal announced its intent to acquire competing studio DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion. It was announced that Meledandri would oversee both Illumination and DreamWorks following the completion of the merger. However, it was later announced that Meledandri had declined to oversee DreamWorks, and will instead be a consultant at the studio. On November 6, 2018, it was announced that Meledandri will be helping Universal and DreamWorks to reboot the Shrek and Puss in Boots franchises. He intends, however, to retain the original voice actors, as he pointed out they were perhaps the most memorable parts of the series.
