A scooper claims the scrapped first draft of DreamWorks’ long-delayed sequel was a meta, real-world isekai story — and honestly, it sounds wilder than whatever we’re getting in 2027.
If you needed proof that Shrek 5 has had a chaotic decade behind the scenes, here you go. Insider account MyTimeToShineHello — a Marvel-and-animation scooper with a mixed but occasionally jaw-dropping track record — just dropped what she’s calling the original version of the Shrek 5 script. And it’s… a lot.
Here’s the tweet (embed it on the page from her X feed):
So. Let’s unpack this, because there’s a lot to get into — including how credible the source actually is, what we officially know about Shrek 5, and why the original teaser was greeted with the warmth of a Magic Mirror getting hurled across the throne room.
First, About The Source
MyTimeToShineHello is a known scooper in the Marvel and animation rumor mill. Her hits include a substantially correct Spider-Man: No Way Home plot leak months before release and several Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness details that landed. Her misses include the long-running rumor that Adam Driver and Margot Robbie were in serious contention for Fantastic Four roles — they seemingly weren’t. Translation: she has real industry tips, but she also throws plenty of rumors at the wall to see what sticks.
So treat what follows the way you’d treat anything labeled “scooper says”: worth taking seriously, not worth tattooing on your forearm.
She earlier dropped a shorter, related scoop in September 2025 claiming Farquaad would return as the owner of a Shrek-themed amusement park. This new leak frames that detail as part of an earlier draft of the film — meaning the story may have been reworked considerably since.
What This “Original” Version Was Actually Doing
If the leak is accurate, the scrapped Shrek 5 was a fish-out-of-water, real-world-isekai story with three big swings:
1. It resurrected Lord Farquaad through canonical loophole gymnastics. The leak’s wildest move is the idea that Farquaad survived being eaten by Dragon by touching a magical object inside her stomach mid-digestion. That’s the kind of plot device that exists purely to bring John Lithgow back to a franchise that very famously killed his character in the first movie. For the record, Farquaad’s “ghost” already returned in the 2003 theme park ride Shrek 4-D, so this isn’t entirely without precedent — DreamWorks has been looking for a way to walk that death back for over twenty years.
2. It made Shrek aware that Shrek is a real-world franchise. A Universal-style theme park starring Shrek? That’s not subtle. It’s basically Last Action Hero meets Free Guy meets a thinly veiled jab at Universal Orlando, where DreamWorks characters have been a fixture for decades. It’s the kind of meta swing that could have been transcendent or absolutely insufferable, with very little in between.
3. It put Felicia front and center as a magical screw-up. Per the leak, Felicia (Shrek and Fiona’s daughter, voiced in the actual film by Zendaya) is the catalyst — a magic-college-bound teenager whose botched spell strands her family in our reality. That’s a clean coming-of-age engine and very much in line with what DreamWorks has confirmed: that the new film centers on the now-teenage Felicia.
For longtime fans, the meta angle isn’t entirely shocking. Shrek has always been a franchise that winks at the camera — it built its entire brand on skewering Disney fairy tale tropes. But a full-on real-world plot would have been the biggest tonal departure since Shrek the Third.
What We Actually Know About The Real Shrek 5
Here’s where things get awkward, because even the official version of Shrek 5 has been a moving target.
The film is now scheduled to hit theaters on June 30, 2027 — its third release date in three years. It was originally set for July 1, 2026, then pushed to December 23, 2026, then delayed again in August 2025 to dodge a brutal December slot that had Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday dropping just five days earlier. It will arrive 17 years after Shrek Forever After — the longest gap in the franchise.
Confirmed creatives: Walt Dohrn directs, with Conrad Vernon and Brad Ableson co-directing. Michael McCullers is writing. Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz are all back, joined by Zendaya as a now-teenage Felicia. Eddie Murphy has also confirmed a Donkey spinoff is in development as a separate project.
The plot of the actual movie? Officially, DreamWorks hasn’t said much beyond “Felicia is a teenager now and Shrek is dealing with it.” Which is exactly why a leaked alt-version like this gets traction.
The Teaser Disaster That Started All This
To understand why a leaked “original draft” is even a story, you have to remember what happened the last time DreamWorks let Shrek 5 into the wild.
On February 27, 2025, the studio dropped a 27-second teaser featuring Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona scrolling through a TikTok-like Magic Mirror, with Felicia briefly revealed at the end. It was supposed to debut in December 2025, but co-director Brad Ableson confirmed on Instagram that the studio rushed it out early because Zendaya’s casting had leaked.
The reaction was, in technical industry terms, not great.
Within four hours, the teaser had racked up 1.2 million YouTube views, 63,000 likes — and 93,000 dislikes. DreamWorks disabled the comments. Fans hated the new animation style (which is actually DreamWorks’ MoonRay engine, the same one used on the universally adored Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). They hated the meme-aware humor. They hated that Shrek and Fiona somehow had fewer wrinkles than they did 15 years ago. The discourse was so loud that fans started openly comparing the situation to the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign campaign — as in, can we please get the internet to bully DreamWorks the way we bullied Paramount.
Whether that backlash had anything to do with the subsequent delay (or any rumored script reworks) is unconfirmed. Universal officially blamed scheduling. But the optics? Suspicious.
So… Was This The Original Plot?
Here’s the honest answer: maybe.
The leak fits the kind of pattern animation insiders have been hinting at for over a year — that Shrek 5 has been heavily reworked, possibly more than once, since voice recording began in 2024. The delays suggest a project that isn’t locked. The decision to push out a 27-second teaser ahead of schedule suggests a studio playing defense, not offense. And MyTimeToShineHello has been correct on big plot leaks before, even if she’s also been wrong.
What seems likely: something close to this version existed at some point in development. Whether it was the foundational draft, an abandoned alt-pitch, or a single discarded act, we may not know until Shrek 5 hits theaters in June 2027 and we see what’s left of it.
Until then? Picturing John Lithgow as Lord Farquaad, slightly older, slightly more bitter, gleefully cutting ribbons at a Shrek theme park while Felicia and Donkey try to figure out how to spell their way home is, frankly, a better movie pitch than most things in development right now.
