Illumination (formerly named Illumination Entertainment) is an American film and animation studio founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007 and owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a division of Comcast. Meledandri produces the films, while Universal finances and distributes all the films.[5] The studio is responsible for the Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets franchises and the film adaptations of Dr. Seuss’ books The Lorax and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The Minions, characters from the Despicable Me series, are the studio's mascots. Illumination has produced 10 feature films, with its latest release being The Secret Life of Pets 2, with an average gross of $695.4 million per film. The studio's highest-grossing films are Minions, which has grossed $1.159 billion worldwide, Despicable Me 3, $1.034 billion and Despicable Me 2, $970.8 million. All three are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and six of their films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films.
A pair of lab rats, Washington and Jefferson, were sent into space aboard a rocket in an experiment. However, after some incident in space, the rats had been mutated and gained super-intelligence. Over forty years on, they have returned to earth and immediately commenced with plans for world domination, amassing a huge army of rats with instructions to destroy everything in sight. The felines of the world band together to combat this menace forming a group called the 'Scratch Cats'. Headed by cat genius Professor Rex Julius, they fight off these rats with several of his inventions which eliminate the rats in a humane way.
