Shrek won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.The computer animation on Shrek took more than four and a half years to complete.Mike Myers replaced Chris Farley, who died in 1997 before he finished voicing Shrek’s dialogue. Myers originally recorded Shrek in his normal voice but later switched to a Scottish accent—at a cost of $4 million for re-recording.Shrek received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2010.Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow never met each other while working on the film. They all read their parts separately.“I’m a Believer,” the last song in the movie, was chosen because of the line “I thought love was only true in fairy tales.”More than 100 models were made of Princess Fiona before the directors picked the final design.The film was adapted into a stage musical in 2008.Nicolas Cage was offered to voice the role of Shrek, but he turned it down because he didn’t want to be drawn as an ugly ogre.The character of Shrek is based on a figure in Russian folklore with the same name, dating as far back as 1200.Shrek was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.The song “All Star” by Smash Mouth, heard in the opening credits, was initially only a “placeholder,” but test audiences loved it, so the producers kept it.There are 36 unique locations in Shrek—more than any other computer-animated film at the time.
The scene where Princess Fiona burps was written after a recording session where Cameron Diaz burped after drinking Coca-Cola.Donkey and Fiona are the only characters to refer to Shrek by name.Shrek is the second Cameron Diaz movie where her love interest is green. The Mask was the first.“Shrek” means “monster” in Yiddish, and comes from the German word “Schreck,” meaning “terror” or “fright.”Happy Days’ Tom Bosley and Marion Ross were slated to voice Shrek’s parents in the original Chris Farley version of the film.In early sketches, Donkey resembled Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.
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