The “Shrek” franchise has taught us many things, from ogres similarities to onions and the words to Smash Mouth’s “All Star” but now it’s being rebooted for a new audience.
As reported by Variety, Chris Meledandri, the man behind Illumination Entertainment’s “Despicable Me” franchise is tasked with rebooting the beloved series. However, Meledandri told Variety the characters will still be voiced by their original actors.
“When you look back on those vocal performances they’re awesome, and while you certainly could make a case for a complete reinvention, I find myself responding to my own nostalgic feelings of wanting to go back to those characterizations,” Meledandri said.
Chris Meledandri is planning on having Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy returning to voice their characters in the “Shrek” reboot. Photo courtesy of polygon.com
That’s a relief, because I honestly can’t picture Shrek being voiced by anyone but Mike Myers. I know Chris Farley was originally set to play the ogre before his sudden death, and Myers originally gave Shrek a totally different voice, but his Scottish twang has forever become synonymous with the green monster.
With his quote, I guess it’s safe to assume Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas and Eddie Murphy are also going to be returning to the animated reboot. Diaz reportedly retired from acting, but I hope she’ll make an exception for this voice-over role because I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to someone else voicing Princess Fiona.
Since “Shrek” was Dreamworks Animation’s biggest hit, the franchise outstayed its welcome throughout the 2000s. with each sequel being worse than the previous (excluding “Shrek 2” which was honestly pretty great). Do you remember “Shrek the Third” and “Shrek Forever After?” If you don’t, you’re lucky because they certainly weren’t on the level of the first two animated features.
“Shrek 2” was actually a great sequel to the original film, but the movies that followed it got increasingly worse. Photo courtesy of whatsontv.co.uk
Illumination Entertainment is currently rebooting “The Grinch” which is coming to theaters this weekend. Are they just going to be remaking early 2000’s hits? I feel like they should’ve waited to see how “The Grinch” does at the box office and is received by audiences and critics before greenlighting another reboot.
As a college student, I can attest to the fact that “Shrek” is as close to a classic as any film from my generation’s childhood. Everyone was universally thrilled when it recently became available to stream on Netflix. The amount of “Shrek” references casually thrown out in classes and throughout campus is uncountable; it happens at least on a daily basis. All you need to say is “Somebody once told me” and you’ll have a group of people finishing the Smash Mouth song for you. The amount of memes that feature the ogre is astounding. The character and the franchise have really struck a nerve with people who grew up with the ogre and we can’t seem to get it out of our heads.
The one thing I’ve realized after we’ve been bombarded with a slew of remakes and reboots over the past few years is that the reiterations don’t belittle the original’s success. So even if the new “Shrek” (or “The Grinch”) sucks, we can thankfully just watch the original and pretend the reboot never happened. Or who knows, maybe it will actually end up being really good. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be more on par with the first two “Shrek” movies than the third and fourth films.
Among other things, “Shrek” taught everyone that ogres are, in fact, quite similar to onions. Photo courtesy of cornel1801.com
How do you feel about a “Shrek” reboot? Let me know in the comments below!
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