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Bruce Hall: I agree with Edwin on the whole direct-to-DVD route, personally. Supporting characters are there to do a very specific job and taking them out of that role often weakens them. A big screen flameout by the Minions could seriously damage the whole franchise. As risk averse a place as Hollywood is, part of me has trouble seeing it happen in theaters. Then again, Universal has been killing it for a little over a year now, and I understand they recently filled the plumbing in all their buildings with hot and cold running champagne.

When a studio has a hot hand, lots of crazy stuff gets greenlighted. It could happen, I'm just not so sure it would be as good an idea as it seems right now...in the middle of the "morning after" success hangover.

Reagen Sulewski: I understand all these arguments against a Minions movie, but there's no reason to think that Universal hasn't already considered why they might not work in a conventional film, and there's no reason to expect that it'll be just Despicable Me minus Gru. I think they might take a chance or two with this narratively, and possibly produce something quite out there. Not to mention that we live in a world where Smurfs 2 can be made, so why not this?

Max Braden: A fourth movie might start to feel like too much after consuming a third movie, but right now I'd plow ahead with a Minions-only movie. Puss in Boots didn't earn the level of its main Shrek series movies did, but it still earned more than four times its production budget (worldwide), and I think the minions have a more universal appeal than Puss did. I don't have any doubt that the storytellers would be creative enough to turn them into a sustainable full-length movie.

David Mumpower: I agree with Reagen regarding the decision to create a Minions movie. Universal knows the risks better than anyone just as they knew a sequel to a standalone film, Despicable Me, was dangerous. They cleverly plotted a course to turn the bad guy face with that project. I expect a Minions movie to be the inverse of Despicable Me, which featured a lot of Gru and a little of the Minions. The formula will undoubtedly succeed. The question is whether it does follow the downward trajectory of Shrek, a brand DreamWorks Animation destroyed by going to the well far too often sans any new ideas. Since Universal is two for two with Minions thus far, I see every reason to give them the benefit of the doubt with regards to movie quality. As for box office, the Minions are the closest this generation has to old school Looney Toons. Kids eat them up and rightfully so. They are adorable. The Minions Movie is going to be hugely massively monstrously big. If it were opening any other time than December, I would give it a chance of usurping The Avengers.

Kim Hollis: I worry a little bit that it's too much of a good thing, but that doesn't matter too much on a monetary level at this point. The studio knows that Minions will bring big bucks, so the project gets a rubber stamp. With all that said, I really would love to see them give the Minions a series of shorts rather than a feature. I agree that they're the modern-day equivalent of Looney Tunes in a lot of ways, so taking them through a series of misadventures in five or six minute stories would work really well.

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