We’re officially returning to the land of Far, Far Away. On Tuesday, DreamWorks Animation officially announced that a fifth Shrek movie has been greenlit, and is currently on track to be released in theaters on July 1, 2026. Shrek 5 will feature a number of returning voice actors from the franchise, including Mike Myers as Shrek, Cameron Diaz as Fiona, and Eddie Murphy as Donkey. This confirmation comes after Murphy recently hinted thaat work on Shrek 5, as well as an untitledย Donkey spinoff film, were both in the works.
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“I started recording Shrek, I think it’s coming out in 2025, and we’re doing a Donkey one next,” Murphy told Collider.
Will Shrek 5 Be a Reboot?
Shrek 5 has been in development in one way or another for the better part of a decade, with writer Michael McCullers hinted that it would bring “a pretty big reinvention” to the franchise as a whole. This made some question if the film would be a full-fledged reboot, or just a brand-new story with the original cast. 2022’s spinoff film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish briefly hinted that Shrek 5 was in store, teasing that Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) and his friends were headed to reunite with “some old friends” in Far, Far Away.
“I’ve been with this cat for almost 20 years,” Banderas previously teased in a 2022 interview. “The first time I didย Puss In Boots, I was working on broadway, so I did my first session there. I’ve done five movies now. There is probably gonna be another, andย Shrekย is probably coming back.”
Why Is Shrekย So Popular?
The film franchise, based on William Steig’s children’s book of the same name, has been nothing short of a cultural juggernaut, inspiring a Broadway musical, fan-made celebrations, and countless other tributes. As the franchise’s original co-director, Vicky Jenson,ย revealed to ComicBook in 2021, the accidental success of Shrek was nothing short of a surprise.
“It was sort of a parody of these kinds of movies, animated fairy tales, and the only one doing that at the time was Disney over the years,” Jenson explained. “The Disney model was still very reverential, and very aspirational, and inspirational and the musicals were composed for the movie, so you would never have this indie influence of existing songs dropped in for score, to set a mood. So no one, as far as I know, had done that in an animated movie and relied on that to hit the key emotional moments in the movie as a live action movie would. And then the tone, the reverential irreverent humor, was also a bit different. Not taking itself too seriously, but at the same time letting real feelings come through. Shrek used humor to keep everybody away, but he had a broken heart and when he revealed it to Donkey, you felt it. So yeah, finding the balance, it was trial and error. That’s the benefit of animation.”
As mentioned above, Shrek 5 will be released exclusively in theaters on July 1, 2026.
