There are moments that make you realize time is a cruel and unrelenting force, and seeing a 25th-anniversary poster for Shrek is absolutely one of them. If you were around for the original release in 2001, congratulations: you are now old enough to have a quarter-life crisis about a movie where an ogre rescues a princess with the help of a talking donkey. The new poster for the anniversary re-release is here to remind you that layers aren’t just for onions anymore—they’re also for the accumulated nostalgia of two and a half decades.
Universal Pictures is bringing Shrek back to theaters on May 15, 2026, and the poster leans hard into the celebration angle. Bold text announces the 25th anniversary, presumably because subtlety was never really this franchise’s strong suit. The image features our favorite green grump in all his glory, alongside the cast of fairy tale misfits who helped redefine what an animated blockbuster could be. Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz are all credited, because even though their voices have aged, the characters remain frozen in digital amber.
What Shrek accomplished in 2001 cannot be overstated. It was the film that launched DreamWorks Animation as a legitimate competitor to Pixar, the movie that proved fairy tale parodies could be both commercially viable and genuinely subversive, and the cultural phenomenon that gave us Smash Mouth’s “All Star” as an unintentional anthem for an entire generation. It won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating out Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. and establishing that the animation race would not be a one-studio show.
The film’s impact extended far beyond the box office. Shrek became a meme before memes were really a thing, his face plastered on everything from t-shirts to questionable DeviantArt accounts. The phrase “ogres are like onions” entered the cultural lexicon alongside “may the Force be with you” and “I’ll be back.” And Eddie Murphy’s performance as Donkey remains one of the greatest voice acting turns in cinema history—a relentless burst of energy and comic timing that somehow never becomes annoying.
But 25 years also invites reflection on what happened after the original. Shrek 2 was arguably better than the first, deepening the characters and introducing Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots. Then came Shrek the Third, which was… fine. And Shrek Forever After, which was… also fine. The franchise eventually became a symbol of DreamWorks’ decline into mediocrity, a cautionary tale about what happens when you squeeze every possible dollar out of a property until the ogre juice runs dry.
The 25th-anniversary re-release offers a chance to remember why we loved Shrek in the first place. Before the sequels, before the spinoffs, before the internet turned him into an ironic icon, there was just a really good movie about an ogre who wanted to be left alone in his swamp. It was funny, it was sweet, it had a dragon falling in love with a donkey, and it treated its fairy tale source material with the perfect blend of reverence and ridicule.
The poster promises a celebration, and that’s exactly what this anniversary should be. Not a cynical cash grab, though the studio is absolutely making money. Not a nostalgia trap, though millennials will absolutely flock to theaters. Just a reminder that sometimes the most unlikely heroes—grumpy, green, and fond of earwax candles—can become legends.
Relive the magic—see Shrek in theaters starting May 15 for its 25th anniversary and remember why ogres are like onions. It’s gonna be a big, bright, beautiful world all over again.
Also Read: Jude Law Is Playing Vladimir Putin and the Poster Is Exactly as Unsettling as You’d Expect