An unknown commodity, Universal Picture’s “Despicable Me” took box office gold last weekend with a $56M opening. So you know what that means… a sequel is automatically underway.

Deadline reports that Universal Pictures, Illumination (Universal’s family film division) founder/CEO Chris Meledandri, and writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio have already begun discussions on the sequel. The box office pull was notable especially since there was no built-in audience. Now that it has an audience, Universal is hoping to turn it into a possible franchise.

As a part of this new franchise, Universal looks to produce two new short films featuring the adorable yellow minions of Gru. It’s currently unknown whether these short films will be shown in front of future Illumination features (similar to Pixar shorts) or if they’d be distributed in another way perhaps via straight to DVD or webisodes. Whatever the case, “Despicable Me” has the minions to thanks, because I think they sold the film rather than Gru (Steve Carrell) himself.

Source: Deadline