DreamWorks has announced a musical version of the animated film SHREK, reports the NEW YORK TIMES. The Broadway production will be directed by Jason Moore, best known for AVENUE Q, and with a script by the playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (FUDDY MEERS). AMERCAN BEAUTY director and theater vet Sam Mendes will produce the production. The musical will have a tryout in another town in 2006, followed by a move to Broadway. No composer has been selected.

"I think we needed to find a book writer and a director before I really thought it was a reality," said Mendes. "And now I think we've found the perfect people."

"There's a supreme challenge in bringing an animated world to the stage and making it theatrical," Moore said. "But what's so wonderful about SHREK is that anarchic attitude placed in a fairy-tale world that I think will thrive onstage."

"There isn't the sort of corporate pressure being exerted that this has to be done for a set prerelease date," Mendes said. We'll be working flat-out from now until it lands on Broadway."