'Shrek' Is Coming To Netflix Sooner Than You Think, So Rejoice ‘00s Kids

Hey now. Netflix is getting an all-star. Get your queue on. Go hit play. On Tuesday, April 24, the streaming service announced that a certain movie glimmers and is gold will be added to the library next week. Yes, Shrek will be available on Netflix on May 1. Fire up a batch of celebratory waffles.

Based on William Steig’s picture book Shrek!, DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek tells the story of an ogre whose tranquil life is upended when all of the fairy tale creatures are banished to his swamp. The 2001 flick, which features the voices of A-listers like Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow, was a big deal. It smashed the box office, blessed the planet with a fire soundtrack, and took home the very first Oscar for Best Animated Picture. It was the dawn of the Shrek Empire.

In 2004, Shrek 2 came out, and like its predecessor, it was a hit. Three years later, Shrek the Third popped up in theaters. Boom, another hit for the franchise. Shrek Forever After was released in 2010, and what do you know? The franchise had yet another hit on its hands. As Deadline reported, the Shrek movie franchise was the highest-grossing animated film series of all time until it was unseated by the Despicable Me series in August 2017.

The Shrek Empire would not stop at four movies. In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter reported that a fifth Shrek film is in the works and is aiming for a 2019 release date. And in addition to all of the Shrek movies, the series also spawned a Puss in Boots spin-off, some video games, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a Broadway musical. Like an onion (or a cake or a parfait), this franchise has layers.

And like an onion (or a cake or a parfait), this franchise also has a massive fanbase. Do you love Shrek? Would you say you are a part of Shrek's ever-growing cult following? Do you love a weird Shrek meme? Have you ever wanted to dress up like Lord Farquaad and go to a park in Madison, Wisc. and compete in an onion eating contest with other Shrek fans? If you bellowed "YES" to all of these questions, then you should look into Shrekfest. Every Labor Day weekend, 3GI hosts a Shrek-themed festival where Brogres and Ogirls don their Shrek-y finest, chow down on onions, and, of course, watch the movie that launched a never-ending stream of memes.

Oh, what a day it has been for everyone's favorite surly green ogre. The same morning that Netflix announced that it will soon welcome Shrek into its warm embrace, University of Toledo’s Twitter account made an intriguing offer. “If this tweet gets 500k retweets we’ll change our mascot to Shrek,” the school’s official account tweeted.

But before the now-deleted tweet could rack up half a million RTs, someone from the university squashed any and all dreams of seeing Shrek become a college mascot. On Tuesday, April 24, University of Toledo media relations specialist Christine Billau confirmed to USA TODAY that the Shrek tweet was a joke; existing mascots Rocky the Rocket and Rocksy the Rockette are not going anywhere. Billau told the publication,

"We are definitely not changing the school mascot to Shrek. If we do reach a half million, we'd plan something special for Rocky."

Though the school mascot tweet was nothing more than a lark, Netflix’s Shrek-tastic announcement was not. One week from today, Brogres and Ogirls will be able to stream Shrek until they are green in the face.