10+ Secrets About The Production Of 'Shrek' That You Probably Didn't Know

Shrek will always be love, Shrek will always be life.

Sophia

• Published in Film & TV
• April 6, 2022

When Shrek first came out in 2001, it broke the mold for what audiences could expect from an animated film. It presented the story of an unapologetic antihero and the princess who falls for him—twisting stereotypes, disrupting preconceived ideas, and setting a new standard for edgy, witty, and clever writing.

Shrek is just one of those movies that have won the audience over with its incredible storyline and portrayal of characters. It is one of the few such films that can be watched again and again without you ever getting bored of it.

That being said, it comes as no surprise that up until the present time, Shrek is still loved by the public, and the Internet is littered with memes and inside jokes from this animated masterpiece. That alone is proof enough that it was truly a pop-cultural reset and an iconic one at that.

Like any other movie and the production that goes behind the scenes, though, Shrek did not exactly go through a smooth process, to begin with. But all is well and settled because of the success it brought to the studio—its four movies and the Puss in Boots spin-off have grossed a combined amount of $3.5 billion, and Ice Age did not even come close to this success!

Here are some interesting secrets and details about this iconic franchise that you may have never known about—until now!

1. It all started with William Steig's 1990 children's book called Shrek!

The classic happily ever after ending was flipped into a whole new trope and it was loved by the producer John William's kids.

"They loved it and showed it to him," Mike Myers told Cinema.com of how the film originated. "Then he brought it to Jeffrey Katzenberg at DreamWorks, and he got DreamWorks interested in it."

"So they ended up turning this little 28-page book into a movie. And it's all about this stinky, smelly ogre who doesn't care what anybody thinks of him."

2. Chris Farley was supposed to be the one who voiced Shrek.

Farley has almost finished recording all of the dialogues of Shrek, but he died of a drug overdose in 1997.

"We kind of lost our way for a considerable amount of time," director Andrew Adamson said, nodding to the time shortly after Farley's death. "It was devastating on a personal level."

"I actually said to Jeffrey, 'Can you please fire me? I can't bring myself to quit.' But he didn't. And then Mike came on and then we refocused and recentered."

3. Mike Myers then filled in the main character's spot but he had no idea back then that he wasn't actually the first choice.

When Myers heard that Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow were in the project, he had no problem saying yes. "I loved the whole idea behind the story, which is that you're beautiful, so don't let other people tell you that you're not just because you don't look like the people in magazines. Or because you're not that weird ideal body image that's out there right now."

While he wasn't actually told that he wasn't the first choice, he somehow figured it out back then even without the heads up. "I was working on [the movie] and I looked at the maquette of Shrek, you know, the little clay model that they make, and I said, 'Was this offered to Farley? It looks like Chris Farley.'"

4. After the part was taken by Myers, some changes were made to the character.

"They changed some of their ideas about the character. Like giving me a Scottish accent," Myers told Cinema.com. "I thought, well, Scottish people are fantastic at being super-happy and then getting super-mad," he said on the WTF podcast, "and I thought, that's an ogre!"

5. The film was supposed to be a motion-captured one, but thankfully, it was switched to a full computer animation.

"What they wanted to do was use puppets for the four-legged characters," editor Sim Evan-Jones said to the Inverse. "They had people in fat suits—and it was just a big fat mess."

"It was a Shrek character that was not the same but not dissimilar to the one we ended up seeing in the movie: a guy in a fat suit walking through an alley in a town and then he's mugged by this character they called the Mugger. Shrek was accompanied by the donkey, who was played by a person using their feet for the back legs and brooms for the front legs."

6. Like almost all original fairy tales, the original story of Shrek was also too dark.

"It could've been an obscure cult movie if it had been done like that. Jeffrey didn't want that, he wanted a story that would be original—and at the same time pop," said production designer Guillaume Aretos.

When they began redesigning, they got to the part where Shrek and Donkey were visiting Lord Farquaad to remove the storybook castoffs from the swamp. "Farquaad 'wants his population to be happy by force if necessary—and everything is neat and perfect,'" said Aretos,

"So we started designing and the images that came out…looked like Disneyland. Jeffrey Katzenberg looked at the images we made and said, 'That's exactly Disneyland. Go for it, that's even more fun, push it.'"

7. Nicolas Cage was also considered to play Shrek, but he passed down the offer.

He says that he has no regrets, though. "Well, the news said it was because of vanity. I think that's a bit strong. But the truth is, I'm not afraid to be ugly in a movie," he explained on Today in 2013.

"When you're drawn, in a way it says more about how children are going to see you than anything else, and I do care about that." He turned down the offer for almost the same reason that he decided to voice Grug in Croods.

"I want kids to look at Grug [and think] 'Well, he's a little scary, but he's a big teddy bear,'" Cage said. "And I wasn't sure I could do that with Shrek."

8. Cameron Diaz wasn't also the first choice for Fiona. It was Janeane Garofalo that was supposed to play her at first.

"I was never told why," Garofalo told Vulture of losing the part. "I assume because I sound like a man sometimes? I don't know why. Nobody told me."

9. John Lithgow wasn't initially sold to the idea of playing a short monarch that has a Napoleon complex.

"I always said I would never play anyone short," the 6-foot-4 star said to the Los Angeles Times in 2009, "and then came Lord Farquaad. "There's always something new that I hadn't thought of."

"I'm usually the subject of someone's brainstorm. I get very surprised by the things people offer me, and I just get excited about the next thing I do."

10. The Gingerbread Man torture scene was inspired by a children's record.

When tasked with coming up with a scene with the Gingerbread Man, "I went back to my desk and sat down," storyboard artist Conrad Vernon told Inverse. "I was like, 'What do I know about the Gingerbread Man?' And I had this little TV set with a record player on top of it, and on one side of the record was the 'Gingerbread Man' and on the other side of the record was 'Do You Know the Muffin Man?'"

This led him to think. "What if they were torturing the Gingerbread Man for the information? How do you torture a gingerbread man? Well, you break his legs off, you dunk him in milk," Vernon described.

"I was like, 'Maybe he doesn't sing the 'Muffin Man' song; maybe it's like an interrogation.' I wrote it out on a piece of paper and then boarded it out, and when I pitched it, I used that voice."

Katzenberg was then impressed with his humor and his skills at voice acting. "They tried for about two months to find actors to replace me," Vernon said.

"But they finally just said, 'Screw it. We can't find anyone. Can you do it?'"

11. Gross-out kind of humor was pushed and heavily encouraged.

"The opening scene, where Shrek is reading the fairytale book and then it's revealed that he's in the toilet," said storyboard artist Chris Miller, "that got a laugh at a screening, and then suddenly it was free rein to make it a full-on comedy."

"We really did make the movie for ourselves, and made it accessible for children rather than making a movie for children that was accessible to adults," said director Adamson.

12. Some of the film personnel actually had to take mud showers to study how Shrek takes a bath.

Art director Douglas Rogers even found himself fending off an alligator during their trip to a magnolia plantation that he booked just in order to gain inspiration for Shrek's swamp.

14. Shrek's success also pushed the success of every DreamWorks production that followed.

This includes Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon.

"They defined us as a company in terms of what a DreamWorks Animated movie is and can be and should be, so they really helped us find ourselves," Katzenberg said in an interview with The Age last 2007.

"That first Shrek saved the company financially. We're here today because of it."

"It's been a great blessing. I refer to it as the gift that keeps on giving."

The Shrek franchise definitely deserves all the love and success it has received for the past two decades, and it has truly cemented its place in the pop culture world as one of the best animated films ever that both kids and adults can shamelessly enjoy.

Is Shrek one of your favorites? Comment down your thoughts, or share this article for all your family and friends to see!

Sophia