Fe, Fi, Four 'Shreks'

Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2004 at 2:42 PM Central

by John Couture

If you happen to be the two people in the country that didn't see Shrek 2 this weekend, I have some more bad news for you. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the man who puts the 'K' in Dreamworks SKG, announced at the Cannes film festival that the studio has given the greenlight to two more sequels to the ogre romp Shrek.

The enormous success of Shrek 2's opening weekend, the second highest Friday to Sunday numbers ($108.4 Million) ever behind only Spider-Man, was the final piece to the sequel puzzle. Dreamworks is in final negotiations with Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas to lend their voices to Shrek 3.

Just don't expect to see it or Shrek 4 in theaters anytime soon. Dreamworks is keeping the same deliberate production schedule for the new sequels as the first two movies to maintain the same high level of computer animation and creativity.

That means Shrek 3 should debut in 2007, while Shrek 4 will tentatively hit theaters in 2010. No word on the plot for either movie yet, but it's safe to assume that by the time the fourth movie hits theaters almost a decade after the first one, that everyone's favorite green ogres will have children running around their swamp.