It turns out the man who gave us Jedi and whip-cracking archaeologists harbors a soft spot for chattering yellow chaos agents. George Lucas is lending his voice to Minions & Monsters, and the reveal came straight from Illumination boss Chris Meledandri in a recent Collider interview.
According to Meledandri, Lucas is a genuine, slightly-under-the-radar fan of the Despicable Me franchise. “It was such a thrill to learn and share that with the team,” he said, adding that the Star Wars creator sits “among a very small group of people who the entire studio shares a level of respect for that is just off the charts.”
Once the studio knew Lucas was in their corner, the next step was obvious: get him behind a microphone. Meledandri said an “idea for a character” emerged that fit the brief, and the pitch earned “a fast yes” from Lucas himself.
So who exactly will he be? For now, Illumination is keeping that under wraps. But there’s a tantalizing clue in the premise. Minions & Monsters is set in the 1920s, with the gang attempting to make their own movie — a backdrop that practically begs for a Lucas cameo. Given his well-documented love of vintage cinema, woven through both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, it’s easy to imagine him voicing a silent-era director who gets unceremoniously trampled by the little guys. Or maybe, even better, a tiny yellow Minion who happens to look suspiciously like George Lucas. We can dream.
It’s a smart bit of casting that plays to the franchise’s strengths. The Minions thrive on the gap between their wide-eyed, gibberish-spouting innocence and the chaos they leave in their wake, and dropping a Hollywood legend into a period-piece sandbox gives the writers plenty of room to wink at film history. Illumination has long built its appeal on layering grown-up gags beneath kid-friendly slapstick, and a Lucas voice role fits that template neatly.
There’s also a certain poetry to it. Lucas built an empire on “funny little guys” — droids, Ewoks, Jawas — so his affection for the biggest little guys of the current movie era tracks perfectly. The Minions are, in a sense, the spiritual descendants of the scrappy, lovable creatures he popularized decades ago.
Minions & Monsters arrives in theaters on July 1. Lucas’s exact role may stay secret until then, but the prospect of the Star Wars mastermind sharing screen space with a horde of banana-obsessed minions is reason enough to mark the calendar.
