The film was based on the 1990 children’s book Shrek!, written by acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist William Steig. He was 83 years old when he wrote it and died in 2003 at the age of 95 — two years after the film was released.
Shrek became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Steven Spielberg wanted Bill Murray and Steve Martin to play Shrek and Donkey, respectively. But after he bought the rights in 1991, he couldn’t get the project off the ground. Work wasn’t started on Shrek until 1994, when Dreamworks slotted Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to produce.
Producer John H. Williams’ kids are the reason the film was made. They both loved the book and brought it to their father’s attention, who then showed it to Katzenberg.
Chris Farley was the original voice of Shrek. He had recorded 85% of the voice work when he died in 1997. In the Farley version, Shrek was a teenage Ogre who refused to take up his family business and ran away from home to become a knight.
Nicolas Cage turned down the role because he didn’t want to be cast as an Ogre. The studio eventually settled on Mike Myers.
Mike Myers made the studio rerecord the entire script so he could voice Shrek with a Scottish accent. They had finished recording with Myers speaking in his SNL “Lothar of the Hill People” voice, but after he saw a rough cut, he wanted a do-over. The redo cost the studio $4 million.
The early concept art for Shrek had the ogre looking a lot different.
The animation team took mud showers to study the movement of mud.
Shrek was Katzenberg’s revenge on Disney. The producer used to work for Disney, and supposedly had beef with his former boss, Michael Eisner. The film takes jabs at Disney the entire run-time: it opens with the evil Lord Farquad auctioning off fairy tale characters, Farquad’s gaudy castle looks like Disney World (complete with cheesy animatronic puppets that may as well be singing “It’s A Small World, After All”), and the climax sees the princess turning into an Ogre to settle down and live with Shrek in the swamp (a potshot at the attractive, happily-ever-after, prince charming ending that Disney always uses).
