Varèse Sarabande and Craft Recordings celebrate 25 years of Shrek with a brand-new picture disc release of Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell’s beloved score for the Academy Award-winning animated classic. The collectible wide-release vinyl features newly designed character artwork, including a hero image of the film’s protagonists on side A and Shrek and Fiona on side B, with a Barnes & Noble-exclusive variant offering alternate film imagery. These new pressings arrive August 28, 2026. A newly reissued CD edition will be released alongside the vinyl, while the score is now streaming across digital platforms.

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Upon its theatrical release on May 18, in 2001, Shrek became a cultural phenomenon that redefined animated filmmaking with its irreverent humor, emotional sincerity and unforgettable music. The film launched a franchise that would go on to  became the first animated series to cumulatively surpass $3 billion at the global box office – all beginning with the original Shrek. Central to that legacy was the score by Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell, whose music became an enduring sonic signature of the franchise across the 25 years since the film first arrived in theaters.

Discussing the challenge of scoring Shrek, Powell reflected: “Shrek was the third film that Harry and I scored together for Jeffrey Katzenberg and DreamWorks. So you’d think that it would be getting easier, wouldn’t you? Whilst it was a wonderful film to work on (we could tell that from the first rough cut we saw), and whilst we were teamed up with a great group of people (some of whom we knew very well by then… the darling Marylata Jacob for one), Shrek was still, with all these advantages, a difficult project to do. At times Harry and I felt as if we were crossing the same rickety bridge that Shrek and Donkey crossed above the lake of fiery lava (but I can’t reveal who was the frightened one). Making music for this film required us to walk a thin line between sentiment and subversion, truthful emotion and sticky sap, comedy and action, fruits and nuts. But like Shrek and Donkey, we got to the other side and wondered what all the hollering had been about.”

While some of the songwriting cues may have been a struggle for the dynamic duo, the end result was well worth any hardship that occurred in the recording process. “Harry and John created for us some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful themes as well as some of the most exciting passages I can remember hearing in any film,” explained co-director Vicky Jenson. “Their work brought that last intangible but palpable detail that gave our characters an inner life and soul.”