Christopher Meledandri (; born May 15, 1959) is an American film producer and founder and CEO of Illumination. He previously served as President of

20th Century Fox Animation 20th Century Animation, Inc. (originally known as Fox Family Films, Fox Animation Studios, and 20th Century Fox Animation and sometimes referred to as Fox Animation) is an American animation studio located in Century City, Los Angeles. Formed i ...

, and has worked as the producer of the ''Despicable Me'' franchise and the ''Sing'' franchise.

Early life

Meledandri was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to Roland Meledandri, a men's fashion designer, and Risha Meledandri, an activist, growing up in the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. He attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

Career

Early career

Meledandri's first job in the film industry came when he worked as an assistant to executive producer

Daniel Melnick Daniel Melnick (April 21, 1932 – October 13, 2009) was an American film producer and movie studio executive who started working in Hollywood as a teenager in television and then became the producer of such films as ''All That Jazz (film), All ...

on the set of ''

Footloose Footloose may refer to: * ''Footloose'' (1984 film), a musical film ** ''Footloose'' (1984 soundtrack) ** "Footloose" (song), performed by Kenny Loggins * ''Footloose'' (2011 film), a remake of the 1984 film ** ''Footloose'' (2011 soundtrack) ...

''. Meledandri afterwards was the producer for a series of small films, before working as a producer for the 1993

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

film ''

Cool Runnings ''Cool Runnings'' is a 1993 American sports film directed by Jon Turteltaub and starring Leon Robinson, Doug E. Doug, Malik Yoba, and John Candy. It is loosely based on the true story of the Jamaica national bobsleigh team's debut in competition ...

'', which was a financial success. Soon after Meledandri was hired by

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

, where executives presumed that the success of ''Cool Runnings'' showcased Meledandri's ability to produce financially successful family films. After a series of collaborations with filmmaker John Hughes, Meledandri was placed in charge of

. One of the first films released under Meledandri's tutelage was the animated science fiction film ''

Titan A.E. ''Titan A.E.'' is a 2000 American animated science fiction film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and starring Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, John Leguizamo, Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofalo and Drew Barrymore. Its title refers to the spacecraft ...

'' (2000), a costly

box office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

whose failure almost caused him to be fired, and which caused

Fox Animation Studios Fox Animation Studios was an American animation production company owned by 20th Century Fox and located in Phoenix, Arizona. After six years of operation, the studio was shut down on June 26, 2000, ten days after the release of its final film, ...

to be shut down.

Blue Sky Studios

In 1998, Meledandri led Fox's acquisition of fledgling visual effects house

Blue Sky Studios Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American computer animation studio based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was founded on February 22, 1987 by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy after their e ...

, which became a commercially successful production studio. He oversaw the creative and business operations of Blue Sky, which became wholly owned by Fox. While at the studio, Meledandri supervised and/or executive produced films including ''

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

'' (2002), ''

Robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

'' (2005), '' Ice Age: The Meltdown'' (2006), and '' Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who!'' (2008). He also produced two animated shorts, ''

Gone Nutty ''Gone Nutty'' (also known as ''Scrat's Missing Adventure'') is a 2002 American computer-animated short film directed by Carlos Saldanha for Blue Sky Studios. The short features the character Scrat from ''Ice Age'', who is yet again having troubl ...

'' (2002) and ''

No Time for Nuts ''No Time for Nuts'' is a computer-animated short film from Blue Sky Studios, starring Scrat from ''Ice Age''. Directed by Chris Renaud and Mike Thurmeier, it was released on November 21, 2006, on the DVD and Blu-ray release of '' Ice Age: The Melt ...

'' (2006), both were nominated for an

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

2007–present: Illumination

Meledandri left as President of 20th Century Fox Animation in early 2007, being replaced by Vanessa Morrison, and founded Illumination, an animated film production company that was co-owned by

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

, which fully financed and owned the films. Fox had attempted to retain Meledandri, but it was reported by the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' that Universal's offer of an ownership stake in Illumination had persuaded him to switch. Meledandri's deal with Universal gave him a portion of box-office returns made by Illumination, and as of 2011 he also owned an undisclosed stake in the studio. In 2010, Illumination released its first film, ''

Despicable Me ''Despicable Me'' is a computer-animated media franchise centering on Gru, a reformed super-villain (who later becomes a father, husband, and secret agent), and his yellow-colored Minions. It is produced by Illumination and distributed by ...

'', which became successful. Meledandri built a good relationship with chairman of

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primari ...

Stephen Burke, who liked Meledandri's propensity for producing animated films on a relatively low budget. Illumination released a film version of Dr. Seuss' ''

The Lorax ''The Lorax'' is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, the titular character, who "speaks for the trees" and confronts the Once-ler, a business magnate who cause ...

'', which continued the successful collaboration between Meledandri and Theodor (

Dr. Seuss Theodor Seuss Geisel (;"Seuss"
'' He also produced the franchise spin-off prequel, '' Minions'' (2015) and the sequels to ''Despicable Me'', ''

Despicable Me 2 ''Despicable Me 2'' is a 2013 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The sequel to ''Despicable Me'' (2010), it is directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, and wr ...

'' (2013) and ''

Despicable Me 3 ''Despicable Me 3'' is a 2017 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Illumination and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to ''Despicable Me 2'' (2013), the third main installment, and the fourth installment overal ...

'' (2017).

2016–present: DreamWorks Animation and Nintendo

On April 28, 2016,

announced its intent to acquire competing studio

DreamWorks Animation DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA, also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios and simply known as DreamWorks) is an American animation studio that produces animated films and television programs and is a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, a division ...

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 revive the ''Shrek'' franchise. Meledandri intends, however, to retain the original voice actors, as he pointed out they were perhaps the most memorable parts of the series. In January 2018,

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

announced during a fiscal meeting that Illumination would be developing an animated

Mario is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creat ...

film and that Meledandri will co-produce the film with ''Super Mario'' creator

Shigeru Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors. Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential designers in the history of video games, he is ...

. On July 5, 2021, it was reported that Meledandri would join Nintendo's board of directors "as an independent and non-executive outside director", in order to help Nintendo through their filmmaking experience as the company moves towards developing films after Illumination's ''

The Super Mario Bros. Movie ''The Super Mario Bros. Movie'' is an upcoming computer-animated fantasy adventure comedy film based on the Nintendo video game franchise ''Mario''. The film is produced by Illumination with financing from Universal Pictures and Nintendo, ...

''.

Personal life

Meledandri is a member of

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion ...

, and is a member of the board of trustees at

The Hotchkiss School The Hotchkiss School is a coeducational preparatory school in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States. Hotchkiss is a member of the Eight Schools Association and Ten Schools Admissions Organization. It is also a former member of the G30 Schools gr ...

Lakeville, Connecticut Lakeville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States, close to Dutchess County, New York. It is within the town of Salisbury, but has its own ZIP Code (06039). As of the 2010 census, the population of Lak ...

. He has two sons, born c. 1990 and 1998.

Filmography

Films

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Meledandri, Chris 1959 births 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from New York City Film producers from New York (state) American animated film producers Blue Sky Studios people Hotchkiss School alumni Dartmouth College alumni American chief executives Living people Illumination (company) people American mass media company founders