Shortly after getting back from working on 9 in Toronto, I started working for Illumination Entertainment on a film code-named "Project E". For months, people kept asking me questions about it, but thanks to an NDA and an overall level of secrecy among the production crew, I kept quiet. I didn't even tell Sam.

Now after many months of secrecy, the cat is out of the bag with a press release in Variety. Here's a snippet:

Illumination Entertainment topper Chris Meledandri has kicked off his Universal Pictures-based family film unit with "Despicable Me," a 3-D CG-animated film that has Steve Carell voicing the title character.

Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Russell Brand, Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords"), Jack McBrayer ("30 Rock") and Julie Andrews are providing the other lead voices. The film will be released in 2010.

Carell's title character is a deplorable man known as Groo who masterminds the mother of all heists when he plots to steal the moon. Egged on by an evil mother (Andrews), Groo finds one obstacle in his way: a trio of orphan girls who temporarily come under his care and won't leave.

...

Meledandri said the spirit of the film came partly from taking his sons to see family films and discovering they always most loved the villains