#unreleased animation

Though it's long been public knowledge that Chris Farley was the original voice of Shrek, it wasn't until this week that the general public could listen to the audio. John Garbett, who was involved in the early stages of Shrek's production, uploaded the scene to his Vimeo channel. 

The video presents an interesting look into how the film changed during production, giving us a glimpse of what could have been. Originally Shrek was set to be voiced by SNL alumnus Chris Farley, who passed away before the film was completed. Although he had reportedly recorded as much as 90% of his dialogue at the time of his death, DreamWorks chose to recast the role with Mike Myers. The character's voice was changed a third time when Myers, midway through production, asked if he could re-record his dialogue in a Scottish accent.

The result is that this animatic differs from the final film in many ways, though a very similar scene appears in the movie. For one thing, Farley's Shrek sounds a lot less grumpy than Myers's. The scene also features a lot of dialogue that didn't make it into the finished film, including some backstory about Shrek's parents. Watch the video below.