"Since we made Shrek in the digital format, you actually can see it in its purest form digitally"
About this Quote
Katzenberg is selling a kind of cleanliness: the idea that Shrek exists most authentically when it stays inside the machine that birthed it. “Purest form” is a loaded phrase for a franchise built on mud, burps, and fairy-tale grime. The irony is that this is a pitch for a medium, not a meditation on art. He’s arguing that digital projection (or home digital viewing) isn’t a downgrade from film but a return to source, as if the “original” Shrek isn’t a story or a performance but a master file.
The intent is practical and commercial. Early-2000s animation studios were evangelizing digital cinema, partly because it reduced distribution costs and partly because it promised uniformity: no scratches, no faded prints, no theater-to-theater variability. Katzenberg’s line frames that uniformity as fidelity. If you watch Shrek digitally, you’re seeing what the animators saw, not what the projector mangled.
The subtext is about control. Digital formats let a studio standardize the experience and, crucially, standardize the revenue streams: DVD, HD remasters, streaming, re-releases, “definitive” editions. “Purest” becomes a moral alibi for endless repackaging. It also quietly redefines authenticity in the corporate-friendly way: not the communal theater experience, not the cultural moment of quoting Donkey with your friends, but the most brand-faithful reproduction of the asset.
For a producer, it’s a perfect line: technical truth dressed up as artistic principle.
The intent is practical and commercial. Early-2000s animation studios were evangelizing digital cinema, partly because it reduced distribution costs and partly because it promised uniformity: no scratches, no faded prints, no theater-to-theater variability. Katzenberg’s line frames that uniformity as fidelity. If you watch Shrek digitally, you’re seeing what the animators saw, not what the projector mangled.
The subtext is about control. Digital formats let a studio standardize the experience and, crucially, standardize the revenue streams: DVD, HD remasters, streaming, re-releases, “definitive” editions. “Purest” becomes a moral alibi for endless repackaging. It also quietly redefines authenticity in the corporate-friendly way: not the communal theater experience, not the cultural moment of quoting Donkey with your friends, but the most brand-faithful reproduction of the asset.
For a producer, it’s a perfect line: technical truth dressed up as artistic principle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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