Shrek the Third DVD Announced
DreamWorks Animation Hit Movie Comes to DVD November 13th
Paramount and DreamWorks Animation announced that the Shrek the Third DVD, starring the voices of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas, will come out on November 13th. According to DVD Active, the movie will be in an anamorphic wide-screen format, and will feature an English Dolby 5.1 digital soundtrack.
Extras with the Shrek the Third DVD will include:
- An audio commentary (participants to be confirmed)
- Three additional deleted scenes ("The Fauxly Grail," "Hot Lunch," and "Cyrano de Artie")
- "Shrek's Guide to Parenthood"
- A featurette talking about the technical side of Shrek the Third
- Two music videos: "Donkey Dance," and "Dancing Babies" (Hmm, could this be a Shrek take-off on the infamous "Dancing Baby" image from 1997?)
- A "Princess Bootcamp" feature, and some "Big Green Goofs" (a prefabricated “blooper” reel).
There will also be a Worcestershire Academy Yearbook, four additional features ("Merlin's Magic Crystal Ball," "Get Up and Play PSA," "Learn the Donkey Dance," and "How to be Green"), DVD-ROM features ("Shrek Shmash Ups," "Royal Tournament Games," Printables, and Weblinks), plus assorted trailers for as-yet-unannounced movies (Bee Movie? Monsters vs. Aliens?) included in the DVD. The cost for all this has yet to be determined.
Now, in reference to the DVD box cover, a few quick questions for Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation:
- The Shrek franchise is single-handedly your biggest moneymaker, having pulled something on the order of $1.7 billion so far, right?
- Shrek the Third has made over $320 million at the North American box office so far. Is that correct?
- If that’s the case, Jeffrey, why the $%#@ did you spend approximately $5 designing this DVD cover?
We know a cheap mock-up when we see one. And boy oh boy, do we definitely see one!
Notice how phony Princess Fiona and Puss in Boots look on the right hand side. Donkey with Shrek and Shrek Baby #1 looks a little better, but you can tell the images look pasted in place.
Presumably the designer(s) grabbed a couple of image files from the animators and mashed them together to create this thing without any concern over whether the individual pieces worked as a whole. Princess Fiona’s image is clearly from the initial one-sheet we covered back in October 31st of last year. And no, it doesn’t look any better now than it did back then.
Veteran animator Keith Lango (The Ant Bully) had a few things to say about that first one-sheet when it first came out, and those scathing comments (lines like "I can’t get drunk enough to make this look good") apply to this DVD cover.
"There’s a lot to take issue with here," Lango wrote. "The lack of contrast, few quiet areas in the image, jangly poses, cliche’d layout, the haphazard accidental relationship of the background with the foreground, etc. It’s almost like nobody ever saw this all together until it was too late."
The fact that this box cover was produced for a major motion picture is absolutely appalling. The fact that this was produced for a major motion picture that has made over $320 million in domestic box office is a major insult to anyone who would want to buy this DVD.
Perhaps Jeffrey needs to have a long talk with the people who designed this abomination. He might want to use the phrases “Get off your lazy @$$es and do some work,” and “possible termination of employment” somewhere in the discussion. Considering how much money the Shrek franchise has made for DreamWorks Animation, this DVD deserves something much better than this.
You can see the Shrek the Third DVD cover abomination – I mean, cover art over here.
