Shrek (Chris Farley)

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Universal Pictures planned on making a film adaptation of William Steig's Shrek book with Chris Farley’s voice providing the titular character.

Why It Was Cancelled[]

Chris Farley died before the production was completed.
Mike Myers didn't want to do someone else's version, so he asked for the script to be rewritten and that's where the final version of Shrek was formed.
Shrek's appearance was changed because it was considered too creepy for young children.
Steve Martin, Donkey’s original voice actor, has since left his recordings behind.
The film was originally supposed to be produced by Amblimation, but after the studio closed its doors in 1997, the production was moved to DreamWorks Animation in 1998 instead.

Results[]

The Chris Farley version was permanently cancelled.
After Chris Farley died, he was replaced with Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz replaced Janeane Garofalo as the voice provider of Princess Fiona out of respect of Farley's death and her relationship with Farley.
DreamWorks released Shrek in 2001 with Mike Myers as the voice of the title character. Upon release, the film was a critical and commercial success, and it ended up becoming DreamWorks' most famous franchise.
In 2015, Chris Farley's voice recordings have resurfaced.
On July 30th, 2022, LMW user "DingleManBoy" found a sped-up clip of the tape in HD quality on Anders J.L. Beer's Vimeo demo reel. Beer is a previous animator for Dreamworks' pre-production stage of Shrek (1996-1998).
On August 2nd, a twitter user named “Maximosalazar02” Relocated a demo reel back in 2010 that featured the Chris Farley test footage of Shrek.
On August 14th, 2022, YouTube user TheSecretLifeOfAliens uploaded two snippets of the test, a snippet with just Shrek, and a snippet with both Shrek and the Mugger, without the original audio.
On August 17th, 2022, a video containing early models for Shrek and the Mugger was found. On the Hester Studios website.
On November 23, 2023, the full Shrek test video was found, however there’s speculation that an extended version might exist. The original upload has been deleted for unknown reasons. As of now various reuploads with “remastered/restored” versions of this footage currently exist online.