How to Be the Perfect Bad Guy

Matt Patches: Despicable Me is a fairly original concept. Even the promotional materials don't come out and explain the movie, which is great. Was this an original idea or were you approached to develop it by the studio?

Cinco Paul: It was actually based on a story proposal by someone named Sergio Pablos. He was an animator from Spain of all places. He sort of pitched this idea around a villain who has to adopt three little girls in order to pull off his latest...and so he had the idea of a frustrated villain having to deal with these little girls. That really hit home with us because we each have three kids, we both know what it's like to maintain a career and be a dad. It's tricky but that is really what we loved about the project from the get go. Then it was just fun creating a whole movie around that concept who this guy was, and what was his objectives. It was just a lot of fun. It's great because you get to play with a super villain world, a James bond world, but you also get to have the heart of having a bad guy turning good.

Matt Patches: Are there influences from other movies which you went to create a world full of bad guys?

Cinco Paul: Early on we were discussing whether we were in a superhero world or a James Bond world.

Ken Daurio: Yes, the James Bond world.

Cinco Paul: We went for James Bond. That was the main influence and those type of villains like Goldfinger and Dr. No. We did push it towards comic book and super villain land also. He has all these crazy weapons and spaceships that don't exist as much in the James Bond world. We really did take a little of both. There are no heroes in our world.

Matt Patches: So we won't be seeing Gru's James Bond nemesis.

Cinco Paul: No, there is no big force trying to stop this guy. It's just like the real world. We have real big bad villains and very few heroes. It was fun taking iconic imagery and things we that we think of when we think of villains or super villains for movies, and just get them to use all that stuff.

Matt Patches: So it's less good guys vs. bad guys and more villains out doing each other?

Cinco Paul: Right, they are competing with each other and of course there is law enforcement that would be working against them. There is no Superman or Batman.