Mass market communication: Despicable Me 2 Despicable Me 2, an animated film distributed by Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment in July 2013, grossed 970,065,385 dollars around the world (BoxOffice, 2014). The film was a success for its distributors and was nominated for a 2014 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Chris Meledandri, president and CEO of Illumination Entertainment, has an exclusive working agreement with Universal Studios and handles production and animation work on feature films (Barnes, 2011). Universal Studios will be considered the primary distributor of the Despicable Me 2 film and will constitute the majority of the research completed for this article. Universal Studios Hierarchy Universal Studios is part of the NBCUniversal Company which owns multiple media companies across many distribution vehicles, including international. television production and distribution, news outlets in horizontal concentration on the Internet, television, radio and print, as well as television stations, websites and film production (NBCUniversal, 2014). However, NBCUniversal is owned by the media conglomerate Comcast and is a small part of the media business that Comcast does worldwide (Dallas, 2013).Comcast. Comcast, a global media and technology company, is made up of two primary businesses, Comcast Cable Communications, LLC and its parent subsidiary, Comcast Cable and then NBCUniversal, which is primarily the motion picture production and distribution side of the company (Dallas, 2013). Comcast has five main businesses: cable communications, cable networks, broadcast television, movies, and theme parks (Dallas, 2013). Comcast is the largest technology and media company in the United States... middle of paper... today provides media services in the United States and internationally. Works CitedBarnes, B. (2011). For Illumination Entertainment, animation meets economic reality. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/business/media'04illumination.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0BoxOffice. (2014). Despicable Me 2. Retrieved from www.boxoffice.com/statistics/movies/despicable-me-2-2013Comcast. (2014). Company overview. Retrieved from http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/company-overviewDallas, B. K. (2013). NBCUniversal no action letter required. Retrieved from http://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2013/nbcuniversal043013-incoming.pdfMcQuail, D. (2010). McQuail's theory of mass communication (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, Inc. NBCUniversal. (2014). Welcome to NBCUniversal. Retrieved from www.nbcuni.com/corporate/about-us/history/