With Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s Hop opening this weekend, I was able to sit down with Christopher Meledandri (CEO of Illumination) for an extended interview.  As most of you know, Illumination’s first movie, Despicable Me, went on to earn over five hundred and twenty seven million dollars at the worldwide box office.  Not bad for a film that had no build in audience.  As you might imagine, they’re hard at work on the sequel.

During my extended interview, Meledandri talked about the success of Despicable Me, the “it’s so fluffy!” line, how Hop came together and getting the cast, are there any Easter Eggs in Illumination films (like Pixar does it), his CinemaCon panel with George Lucas, James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and he also talks about Illumination’s future projects which include Curious George, Tim Burton’s stop-motion animation adaptation of The Addams Family, Ricky Gervais’ Flanimals, and The Lorax.  Hit the jump to watch:

Universal has a theoretically valuable property on its hands in the classic children’s book series Curious George.  But so far the potential franchise has only produced the moderately successful 2006 animated feature ($58 million domestic) and a direct-to-DVD sequel.  Enter Chris Meledandri and Illumination Entertainment, who laid the groundwork for cartoon success at Universal with this summer’s Despicable Me ($175 million domestic and counting).

24 Frames reports that Illumination will spearhead a reboot of the Curious George franchise, with Larry Stuckey (Little Fockers) writing the script.  In case your childhood was relatively George-free, brush up on the history of the mischevious monkey after the jump.