Pierre Coffin explains why there are no female Minions

Minions co-creator Pierre Coffin thinks a female Minion would be the "beginning of the end".

The 59-year-old filmmaker - who has also voiced every version of the beloved animated character - insisted it has never felt necessary to make any of the creatures women and to do so now would feel "tokenistic" and like they were trying to cash in.

He told The Guardian newspaper: "I think a female Minion would be the beginning of the end. Universal would want to do it because they’d think it would please all the women out there. But I’m not convinced. If I were a woman, I’d think it was tokenistic. I’m not saying we’re not gonna do it or not try, but maybe it’s not meant to be. Or maybe it is! Who knows."

Pierre confirmed he and fellow writers had had a "play around" with a storyline that saw the Minions encounter their female counterparts but it was ultimately discarded.

He said: "We did play around with the idea of having the Minions land on this island where there was another tribe who were all, apparently, female. But it didn’t go further than that.

"In my head, female Minions would look exactly the same as male ones. And in terms of how they breed: they don’t. They just are."

As time has gone by, the Despicable Me and Minions movies have showcased the personalities of the individual Minions, and Pierre feels "protective" of them so he doesn't like them being regarded as a "soulless things".

He said: "In the first two Despicable Me movies, they’re just a group. But with Minions, we needed three really distinct characters, so we made Kevin, Stuart and Bob: authority, aloofness and naivety.

"After that we felt that we should no longer do the Smurf thing.

"So in the second Minions movie there’s this Minion called Otto, who’s one of those guys who you ask, 'How’s it going?' and he then suddenly bursts out with his whole life, 'Oh, everything’s going fine. I love the weather. You won’t believe what happened to me today …' And if you left him to talk for 15 minutes without stopping, he would inevitably get around to Trump.

"So there are characters with arcs in the later movies, and I do feel protective and defensive towards them because they’re not critters. They’re not soulless. They’re not things. They are individuals.

"Sometimes, when I watch the movies I see a sequence where I messed up in this respect and that’s not good. I think what people recognise in them and why they might be successful is that while they look funny and cool and have a graphic quality to them, they do have souls."