Fans have been waiting for a really long time for “Shrek 5,” and apparently, this is the sequel with the longest time gap in the movie franchise. Since the first movie, all four sequels were released just three years apart from each other.
The confirmation of “Shrek 5”
However, since 2010’s “Shrek Forever After,” there is no follow-up yet. Although the fifth movie has been discussed and confirmed as early as 2016, there was no progress in its production since then.
The project has been announced shortly after NBCUniversal purchased Dreamworks Studio. Since “Shrek” is one of the latter’s most successful animated movies, NBCUniversal wants to revive it under the new management. Thus, in 2016, the plans for “Shrek 5” were discussed, and people who will handle the production were also assigned already.
At that time, NBCUniversal’s CEO Steve Burke, revealed that Chris Meledandri would be in charge of “Shrek 5.” He picked the producer as he believes that he can make the movie looks new again.
“Chris Meledandri is creatively going to try to help us figure out how to resurrect ‘Shrek’ and add value as we create new franchises,” the NBCUniversal CEO said during the renewal announcement via NME. “The overall goal will be to maximize revenues by creating popular characters which can be licensed out for lucrative spin-off merchandise and theme park attractions.”
Pre-production and possible date of movie premiere
Less than a year after “Shrek 5” has been confirmed and a new writer Michael McCullers was hired, the script for the movie was completed. The new screenwriter stated that the fifth “Shrek” film calls for a reinvention of the story, so that was what exactly he did.
“I finished that script which I really, really, really love,” Cinema Blend quoted the new writer as saying. “It's really personal to me and it's got a pretty big reinvention behind it that I guess I can't really reveal.”
As for the release date, it was initially reported to premiere in 2019 but this did not push through since filming has not even started yet. On “Shrek 5” movie’s IMDb page, it was posted that it will be arriving in 2022.
