Steven Spielberg bought the film adaptation rights of the original in 1991, and he was still in charge of Amperin Entertainment.
If the film was made that year, the setting would be hand-drawn animation, and Bill Murray and Steve Martin would dub “Shrek” and “Donkey” respectively.
Later, Spielberg decided to change the film to DreamWorks, which was just established in 1994. In 1995, DreamWorks bought the copyright from Spielberg.
There are 36 different scenes in the film, which is the most CG film of the year.
This film was made for more than 4 and a half years, in order to study what kind of mud bath is.
The special effects team personally took a bath with mud in person. Whether it is bathing in mud or bathing with water, it is also the most technically difficult part of the film.
The film was conceived at the end of 1996. Due to the long production time, even the stalk of “The Matrix” released in 1999 can be used (the scene between Fiona and Robin Hood).
The word “Shrek” comes from Yiddish (a language used by German Jews), which means “monster”.
Going back to the source of this word, it comes from the German word “Shreck”, which means “fear”.
During the dubbing process, the main actors of the film had never seen each other, and each recorded their own lines separately.
John Litgau, who voiced “The King”, said he hadn’t met Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy. It was a pity.
He himself is more than 1.9 meters tall, and the voice role is a dwarf, which he thinks is particularly irritating.
The voice actor selected for the role of King was Alan Rickman, but because he was going to voice the “Professor Snape” in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” which was released in the same year, Allen withdrew from the project. Achieve another legendary role.
Originally DreamWorks had decided that Chris Farley would voice Shrek, and almost all of his lines were recorded.
But due to his sudden death in 1997, the fate of the film was completely changed.
The film crew considered finding Farley’s younger brother, or simply finding someone to imitate Farley’s voice to make up the rest of the recording.
But later he was completely changed, replaced by Farley’s friend before his death, his former colleague Mike Myers of SNL.
Mike Myers himself is Canadian. He originally dubbed Shrek with a little Canadian accent.
Later, I felt that it was not right, so I changed it to Scottish English. The re-recording cost 4 million US dollars that year.
Myers also asked the screenwriter to completely rewrite the script because he did not want to be affected by Farley, and the final difference between the two versions was very large.
DreamWorks first found Nicholas Cage to voice “Shrek”, but he refused because he didn’t want to become an ugly monster.
Many years later, Cage admitted that he regretted rejecting the role.
Robin Williams originally wanted to dub a role in the film, but producer Jeffrey Katzenberg had a relationship with Robin while he was still working at Disney, and Robin refused to participate in the film.
But Katzenberg and Eddie Murphy are very familiar with each other since the beginning of their careers.
For so many years, he has been talking about cooperating on a cartoon together, but Eddie is the only candidate for “Donkey” in Katzenberg’s mind.
Like Eddie himself, Katzenberg also believes this is Eddie’s most successful work/character.
Eddie Murphy once said that this film is one of his most satisfying works, and was nominated for BAFTA’s actor category that year. This was also the first animation film at that time.
Cameron Diaz had just conducted kung fu training for “Charlie’s Angels” before dubbing the film.
So when dubbing “Shrek”, she practised her hand gestures while dubbing, and even spoke Cantonese while typing.
This is also the second time Cameron has fallen in love with the green character.
Have you seen “The Mask” co-starring with Kim Carrey?
One of the directors, Andrew Adamson, often quarreled with Katzenberg because of scale issues. The latter felt that some lines in the film were too “adult” and not suitable for cartoons. Andrew didn’t think so.
But history proves that Andrew is right. The audience loves “Shrek” precisely because it is a cartoon that adults will also like.
There are rumors that the image of “King” is based on Disney’s former CEO Michael Eisner, who was also Katzenberg’s former partner and future “enemy”.
Eisner is very tall and once famously said “I hate that little dwarf”, which refers to Katzenberg.
Of course, the prototype is not the prototype, this is just a rumor (who would admit it).
In an interview in the future, Katzenberg said that this film not only saved DreamWorks financially, but also set the film series for DreamWorks’ subsequent film series including “Madagascar”, “Kung Fu Panda”, and “How to Train Your Dragon”. The tone.
“Shrek” is also the first American cartoon (all “fairy tale” themes) to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival since “Peter Pan” in 1953.
J.J. Abrams, who has just started his career, also contributed to the film. He was one of the outsourcing team members that developed the animation for the film.
Fairy tale characters appearing in this film: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Wicked Witch, Three Bears, Pinocchio and Carpenter Geppetto, Three Little Pigs, Wonder Fairy and Peter Pan, Big Bad Wolf, The Pied Piper, Gingerbread Man, Cinderella, Three Blind Mice, Robin Hood and his friends.
Among them, Snow White, Pinocchio, Wonder Fairy and Peter Pan, and Cinderella are all Disney characters.
Robin Hood and his friends also jumped on “Riverdance”… Then it was Vincent Caso who dubbed Robin Hood.
When Shrek and the donkey first entered Duloc, the little puppets in the cabinet sang the scene of “Welcome to Duloc” in unison. It was almost a re-enactment of the “Little World” project in Disneyland. The tune and rhythm of the singing were all the same.
Other scenes related to Disney include Fiona singing with the blue bird (“Snow White”), Shrek watching the stars with the donkey (“The Lion King”), and Fiona needs a true love kiss to break the spell (” Beauty and the Beast), and the donkey can fly (Peter Pan, Dumbo).
Before it was released, the lawyers of DreamWorks watched the film specifically, because there are many satirical scenes and sections about Disney, and they are afraid of being sued by Disney.
The Jiahui of “King” is an “f” (the lowercase is deliberately used because he is a dwarf), which looks particularly like a Facebook logo.
But this is actually a coincidence. Facebook will not be invented until 2004.