Amid a cultural resurgence thanks to the internet’s love of surreal, absurdist, and of course disturbing humour, a fifth Shrek film is on its way. Well okay, it’s unlikely another sequel is in the works solely due to a weird internet fandom, but hey, we can dream.
Michael McMullers, screenwriter of the new film, The Boss Baby, discussed the writing of the script for Shrek 5:
“Shrek 5 is being developed. I finished that script, which I really, really, really love. It’s really personal to me. It’s got a pretty big reinvention behind it that I guess I can’t really reveal, but since DreamWorks was sold to Universal in that time for over $3 billion, I imagine they’re particularly interested in it stepping up and actually figuring out the future of the franchise in that way on the corporate level”.
“Reinvention was sort of called for. There’s been four movies and a lot of material, so the characters are pretty beloved and they’re great characters, but you also have to think of a pretty new take at that point”.
McMullers is right, with four movies under their belt the Shrek characters are well-engrained within the cultural psyche and have possibly had all their stories told. Thus the idea of a ‘reinvention’ – however vague that sounds – is intriguing. In a world that’s practically a fairy tale there’s plenty of avenues the new film could take that could give the franchise a new lease on life.
What shape said reinvention takes will be interesting, but at least there looks to be an attempt at something fresh rather than just releasing a run-of-the-mill fifth film in a franchise for some easy cash. Let’s just hope this ‘reinvention’ isn’t simply adding a new character or transporting the action to fresh locale.
#Peace.Love.Shrek
