So this one’s been a long time coming, and when I say a long time, I say it without exaggeration. Donkey, Shrek’s chatty, deeply needy, never-shuts-up sidekick is officially getting his own movie. As reported by Variety, Universal and DreamWorks have set Donkey for a June 30, 2028 release date, with Eddie Murphy returning to voice the role he’s had since the year 2000. Better yet, Murphy revealed that production is expected to begin this September, just a few months after Shrek 5 premieres on 23 December 2026. The actor also confirmed that he’ll return to voice everyone’s favourite fast-talking donkey. That’s twenty-eight years of being Donkey.
One thing is for sure, Donkey has been carrying entire conversations since he started. He’s the character who has the recipe to turn complete chaos into chaos of a greater degree, yet you’d never want him to stop talking. If there is one supporting character from the franchise that has earned a solo adventure, it is him without a doubt. Murphy also hinted that the film won’t simply recycle the same formula.
The film will work as an exploration of exactly how a donkey became Donkey. Which, sure, sounds like a simple enough premise, except Screen Rant has dropped a detail that genuinely caught me off guard. Donkey wasn’t just born jabbering on. Apparrently he’s not a talking abnormality of his species at all. Get this, he was actually a human transformed into his current state, and that’s how he’s able to speak in the first place. It’s hard to imagine Donkey as a whole entire human being in many ways. But now that he’s getting a movie about how that happened. And boy do I have questions. The problem is that I’m not sure if I want all of them answered.
Charlie Bean is directing. Yes the man behind The Lego Ninjago Movie and the live-action Lady and the Tramp. Matt Flynn is co-directing off the back of his story work on The Wild Robot and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Rebecca Huntley, who produced Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Bad Guys, is on production duty. With this kind of solid talent behind the camera, I have a little more confidence than I expected to have about a donkey origin story.
And there’s precedent for this working. Puss in Boots got his own spinoff back in 2011 with an origin story of his own. And the two Puss in Boots movies combined have grossed over a billion dollars. So DreamWorks clearly knows that pulling a beloved side character out and giving them their own film isn’t just a cash grab. It’s a formula that’s worked before. Now DreamWorks has to prove Donkey can carry a whole film the way Puss did. But the studio’s clearly betting on it.
Before any of that though, we’ve got Shrek 5 first, landing in on 23 December 2026. A full year ahead of Donkey. Mike Myers, Murphy, and Cameron Diaz are all returning as Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona, and Zendaya is joining the cast as Felicia, Shrek and Fiona’s daughter. So Donkey gets one more outing as a side character before he heads off to headline his own thing.
It’s honestly wild that this has taken so long. Think about it, Shrek came out in 2001. It went on to win the very first ever Animated Feature Oscar. And then spawned a Broadway musical with eight Tony nominations. Which then turned into one of the biggest animated franchises in history. It was worth something like four billion dollars across six films, absolute insanity. As for Donkey he has been there for basically all of it. Being loud, being needy, asking if they’re there yet roughly every ten minutes, and somehow he’s the one who took the longest to get his own movie.
The only real question now is whether Donkey can carry an entire movie. Or whether he’ll spend 90 minutes interrupting everyone else who tries to.
