DreamWorks bought the rights to William Steig's picture book Shrek after producer John H. Williams brought it to Jeffrey Katzenberg, and development began in November 1995. The film was first planned as a live-action and animation hybrid, but a 1997 test was judged unsatisfactory and the studio turned to Pacific Data Images for computer animation. Chris Farley was hired to voice Shrek, and he recorded nearly all his lines before he died. Mike Myers replaced him and asked for a full script rewrite, and he chose a Scottish accent similar to the one his mother used for bedtime stories. Katzenberg agreed to redo scenes after a February 2000 rough cut, and the studio reportedly spent more on animation. Donkey was modelled on a real miniature donkey named Pericles from Palo Alto, and the characters' personalities were built around self-esteem issues.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.