Shrek Is Love, Shrek Is Life, Shrek Is Back As DreamWorks Sets 'Shrek 5' For December 2026
A third 'Minions' movie will move up a year and take over its originally announced July slot
Next week, Netflix releases Back in Action, Cameron Diaz’s first film in over a decade. It reunites her with Jamie Foxx, her co-star from her last film pre-hiatus, the 2014 Annie remake. With Diaz returning to acting, that has given DreamWorks Animation the greenlight to go back to doing Shrek stuff, fifteen years after marketing Shrek Forever After as “The Final Chapter”. Shrek 5 was officially announced in July, with Diaz, Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy all returning as Fiona, Shrek, and Donkey respectively. However, things have recently changed from what they were originally announced to be.
At the time, it was set for a July 1, 2026 release, directed by Walt Dohrn, previously a writer and artist on the franchise’s second and third films and head of story on Forever After, where he also voiced Rumpelstiltskin. Now, as revealed Friday, it’s aiming for Christmas money as it moves to Wednesday, December 23, 2026, and has made a directing team with another returning familiar face. Conrad Vernon, the voice of the Gingerbread Man who directed Shrek 2 and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and spent the last decade+ doing Sausage Party and the animated Addams Family movies, has become the film’s second director alongside Dohrn.
It was Murphy who let slip to Collider in June not only about a fifth Shrek film, but a Donkey spinoff. He said “We started doing [Shrek 5] months ago. I did this. I recorded the first act, and we’ll be doing it this year, we’ll finish it up. Shrek is coming out and Donkey’s gonna have his own movie. We’re gonna do Donkey as well. So we’re gonna do a Shrek, and we’re doing a Donkey [movie].” Of course, the return to Far Far Away was teased by the ending of 2022’s Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the $4 billion franchise’s only film in 11 years after the first Puss In Boots. The Last Wish contributed $484 million of that worldwide gross, renewing interest corporately and from the general public.
In Shrek 5’s place in that July 1, 2026 slot will be Minions 3 from sibling studio Illumination, moving up essentially a whole year from its original June 30, 2027 position. The move keeps it in the Independence Day weekend position that has proven fruitful for the franchise. It is frankly a marked improvement over The Rise of Gru’s exact two year delay brought on by COVID. In fact, it is releasing on that previous installment’s fourth anniversary, as like Shrek 5’s new date, the one it left is also a Wednesday. June 30, 2027 is now held by an untitled Illumination event movie that moved from March 19 of the same year. Minions 3 is written by Brian Lynch, who wrote the first film and conceived the story of the second and directed by the voice of the Minions, Pierre Coffin, who directed the first three Despicable Me films and the first Minions.
Illumination founder Chris Meledandri produces both films, alongside Gina Shay on Shrek 5 and Bill Ryan on Minions 3. Shrek 5’s new date will bring competition against Ice Age 6, bringing that franchise, which Meledandri originally oversaw in his decade at Blue Sky before leaving to found Illumination, back to theaters after a decade and Blue Sky’s closure. It opens December 18. It also means the only years since 2016 that Illumination will release multiple films are ones with a Super Mario Bros. movie in them, as the sequel to the 2023 film is also set for 2026.
