‘Shrek’ and ‘Puss in Boots’ Getting Rebooted Because Everything is Terrible and the World Sucks

In the nearly two decades since its release, Shrek has—rightfully I might add—been reevaluated as one of the worst, most sinister children's entertainments that has ever existed. Nevertheless, it's also a product with a ton of built-in recognition which meant that eventually Dreamworks would get around to rebooting it for a new generation.

Believe it or not it's been a full eight and a half years since the last Shrek movie (technically 7 if you count Puss in Boots), which means that an entire generation of kids has grown up without new adventures from the Ogre's world of meta-fairy tales. And now that everything is self-referential and reliant on nostalgia for at least a portion of its appeal, imagine the things yet to come from this long dormant franchise.

According to Variety, Dreamworks is bringing the guys behind Despicable Me on to reboot both Shrek and Puss in Boots. Now that Illumination (the studio behind Despicable Me) and Dreamworks are both under Universal's umbrella, this gives the latter the chance to exploit the former's staff of proven animation creators.

Shrek disappeared from the public conscience, more or less, because it deserved to. The films are—to borrow a word from the franchise to which it will now be playing second fiddle—despicable, and the sooner we erase their memories from our minds, the better off we'll all be. I don't know that rebooting this franchise is the way to do that, but if nothing else, hopefully we'll never have to hear another SmashMouth cover of a Monkees song.