In the whimsical wilds of DreamWorks Animation’s ever-expanding universe, where ogres ogle fairy-tale fiends and dragons dream of domestic bliss, the sharpest sword in the sheath is unsheathing once more. Reports from industry insiders, bubbling up like a cauldron of enchanted stew on November 20, 2025, confirm that Puss in Boots 3 is officially in production—a clandestine caper that’s got fans sharpening their claws in anticipation. Fresh off the fairy-tale triumph of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), which clawed its way to nearly $485 million at the global box office and a 95% Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating, this third installment promises to propel the swashbuckling feline into fresh fables of fortune and folly. Directed by Joel Crawford, the visionary behind The Last Wish‘s lush, live-action-inspired visuals, and co-directed by the dynamic Januel Mercado, the film is slated for a tentative December 2026 release, positioning it as DreamWorks’ holiday hearth-warmer amid the Shrek franchise’s ongoing renaissance. With Antonio Banderas reprising his purr-fect role as the fearless Puss, alongside a cast that’s already teasing tantalizing returns and tantalizing newcomers, Puss in Boots 3 isn’t just a sequel—it’s a saga’s next stride, blending breathtaking bravery with the bittersweet bite of a cat with only one life left to live. As production ramps up in Glendale, California, with voice sessions sparking like sparks from a flintlock, one thing’s clear: the bloodthirsty bandit of San Ricardo is back, boots polished and bravado blazing, ready to steal hearts and horizons alike.

For those who’ve been feline the franchise’s fur, the Puss in Boots saga began as a sly spin-off from the billion-dollar Shrek empire, which DreamWorks launched in 2001 with a green ogre’s grumpy grandeur. The original Puss in Boots (2011), directed by Chris Miller, was a rollicking rags-to-riches romp that grossed $555 million worldwide on a $130 million budget, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and cementing Banderas’ Spanish-accented swagger as animation’s most memorable mustachioed marauder. Voiced with velvet-voiced verve by the Zorro star, Puss— the vain, valiant vigilante with a penchant for peril and paella—charmed his way through a prequel plot pitting him against old flames and outlaw orphans in a quest for magic beans that birthed the Shrek legend. Salma Hayek’s fiery Kitty Softpaws slinked in as his sharp-clawed soulmate, while Zach Galifianakis’ egg-headed outlaw Humpty Dumpty hatched hilarity amid heartbreak. Critics clawed praise for its “exuberant escapades” (The Hollywood Reporter), and audiences adored the arachnid antics of a giant goose that laid golden laughs. Yet, for all its golden goose, the film felt like a footnote—a feline flourish in Shrek’s shadow—until The Last Wish leaped into the limelight.

Released in December 2022 after a COVID-fueled crawl from its 2014 inception, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was nothing short of a narrative Nine Lives revival. Grossing $485 million against a $90 million budget—making it DreamWorks’ highest-grossing original in over a decade—the film wasn’t just a sequel; it was a stylistic sleight-of-hand, blending painterly 2D flourishes with 3D depth in a visual vocabulary that evoked Studio Ghibli’s grandeur and Spider-Verse’s swagger. Crawford, promoted from storyboard artist on Trolls World Tour to this triumphant helm, co-directed with Mercado to craft a tale that traded slapstick for soul-searching: Puss, now down to his final life after eight reckless rumbles, reckons with mortality on a mythic quest for the star that grants one last wish. Banderas, 65 and as agile as ever, infused the feline with a ferocity tempered by fragility—his swordplay a symphony of swishes, his serenades (“¡No me digas adiós!”) a spotlight on the Spanish star’s vocal virtuosity. Hayek’s Kitty returned with claws sheathed in cunning, her reunion with Puss a rom-com rumble that roared with romantic tension. Harvey Guillén’s Perrito, the pint-sized pup with a heart as big as his optimism, stole scenes like a sneaky sausage, while Wagner Moura’s Big Bad Wolf prowled as Death incarnate—a cloaked specter with sickles for scythes and a whistle that chilled the cinema.

The Last Wish’s wish-fulfillment went beyond box-office booty; it was a critical catnip coup, earning a Golden Globe win for Best Animated Feature and an Oscar nod in the same category—the first for a DreamWorks non-sequel since How to Train Your Dragon (2010). With a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it resonated as a resonant reminder of animation’s artistic arsenal: hand-drawn horror sequences that heightened the horror of hubris, fairy-tale flourishes that framed the folklore, and a soundtrack scored by Heitor Pereira that purred with peril and playfulness. John Mulaney’s script, laced with meta-musings on mortality (“Fear the beard? No—fear the one who fears nothing”), elevated the escapades into existential epics, while Florence Pugh’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears gang added anarchic anarchy—three bear bandits with British bite and bear-sized beefs. The film’s finale, a wish that’s wisely withheld, sailed Puss, Kitty, and Perrito toward the Kingdom of Far Far Away, teasing ties to Shrek’s sprawl and sparking speculation: Would the wanderer wander back to ogre-land, or chart a course for cat-astrophe anew?

Enter Puss in Boots 3, the reported resurrection that’s got DreamWorks’ animators animating overtime. Per whispers from reliable scooper Daniel RPK on X (formerly Twitter), production kicked into high gear in October 2025, with voice work wrapping principal sessions by mid-November amid a $120 million budget that’s ballooning for blockbuster visuals. Crawford and Mercado are at the helm once more, their Last Wish alchemy alchemizing a plot that’s pitched as “Puss’s penultimate peril”: fresh off his Far Far Away flotilla, the fearless feline finds his legend legendarily lured into a labyrinthine legend of lost lore. Teased as a “quest for the Quill of Quixote”—a mythical pen that pens prophecies into reality—Puss must pen his own fate before a cabal of cursed scribes scribes his swan song. Returning voices include Banderas’ bravura Puss, Hayek’s hissing Kitty (now a co-lead with claws unsheathed for sharper stakes), and Guillén’s gleeful Perrito, whose pint-sized perspective pivots from comic relief to courageous core. Salma Hayek Pinault, via her Ventanarosa Productions, is producing alongside Mark Swift, ensuring the Latina legacy lingers lushly.

Newcomers are nipping at the narrative’s heels: Oscar Isaac voices the Quill’s enigmatic guardian, a quill-wielding quixotic knight with a quest of his own; Awkwafina slinks in as a sly street-smart sorceress, her sarcasm a sharp counter to Puss’s swagger; and Diego Luna lends his Rogue One gravitas to a ghostly guide from Puss’s past, perhaps a spectral sibling or swindled suitor. John Mulaney returns to sharpen the script, his Big Mouth bite blending with Baumbach-esque banter for dialogue that’s droll and dagger-edged. The animation ambition? Ambitious as ever: Crawford’s crew is cooking a “multi-mythic” mélange, blending Spanish surrealism (think Dalí dreams in Del Toro’s shadow) with steampunk swirls and shadow-puppet sequences for the Quill’s quagmire. Visual effects virtuoso Philippe Glangeaud (The Last Wish) is leading the leap, promising peril that’s painterly and pulse-pounding—Puss parrying phantom foes in a palace of illusions, Kitty cartwheeling through cursed carnivals, Perrito puppeteering puppets in a puppet-master melee.

The buzz building around Puss in Boots 3 is as buoyant as a beanstalk in bloom, fueled by the franchise’s fairy-tale fortune. The Last Wish wasn’t just a win; it was a watershed, revitalizing DreamWorks’ dormant divisions after a decade of dragon droughts and troll tangles. Grossing four times its budget, it outpaced The Bad Guys (2022) and The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021), proving peril pays when packaged with pathos. Critics caroled its “emotional elasticity” (Variety), praising how it humanized the heroics—Puss’s panic attacks a poignant pivot from pratfalls, his wolfish nemesis a metaphor for mortality’s maw. Audiences adored the arachnid action: sword fights that swung like Cirque du Soleil spectacles, fairy-tale folklore flipped on its folklore (Goldilocks as a grizzled gangster? Genius). Banderas, whose vocal vigor vaulted from villainy (Desperado) to virtuosity, called it “a career catnip,” while Hayek hailed the “fierce femininity” of Kitty’s comeback. Guillén’s Perrito, a pup with punchlines and pathos, puppeteered his way to a GLAAD nod for representation that resonated.

DreamWorks, under Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri’s merged mastery since 2019, is milking the momentum: Shrek 5 slates for July 2026, with Eddie Murphy’s ogre eyeing a 2025 voice wrap, and a Donkey spin-off doodling in development. But Puss’s path is paramount—his Last Wish leap leapfrogged the franchise’s fatigue, its 95% score a siren song for sequels. “Puss proved we can push poetry in animation,” Crawford confided in a Collider chat, teasing the third’s “bolder brushstrokes—surrealism meets swashbuckling, with stakes that sting sweeter.” Production perks include a pandemic-proof pipeline: remote voice-over vaults (Banderas beaming from Spain, Isaac from New York), AI-assisted animation for agile adjustments, and a $150 million marketing blitz blending TikTok teasers with theater tie-ins. Early concept art, leaked via artist portfolios, paints a palette of peril: Puss poised on precarious parapets, Kitty conjuring quills in quartz quarries, Perrito piloting phantom ships under starry sieges.

The cast’s camaraderie is the cat’s pajamas, a clowder of collaborators who’ve clashed and clicked since the first film’s frenzy. Banderas, 65 and as acrobatic as his alter ego (he’s trained in fencing for the fights), bonds with Hayek over bilingual banter—her Kitty a “clawed counterpart” to his cavalier charm. Guillén, 34 and fresh from What We Do in the Shadows‘ vampiric verve, voices Perrito with a pathos that punches above his pup’s weight, his ad-libs a “therapy for the tail-wagger in all of us.” Isaac’s knightly knight promises quixotic quirks, Awkwafina’s sorceress a snark that snaps like a spellbook spine, and Luna’s ghostly guide a gravitas that grounds the ghoulish. Mulaney’s pen, polished by Dopesick depth, pens punchlines that probe: Puss pondering “What if the wish was for whiskers eternal?” amid existential escapades.

Fan fervor is feline frenzy: #PussInBoots3 trends on X with 500K tweets since the scoop, fan art flooding DeviantArt with quill quests and wolf cameos (Death’s return? A razor-sharp rumor). Reddit’s r/Shrek swells with speculation—”Puss portals to Shrek’s swamp?”—while TikTok tutorials teach “Puss poses” from the trailer’s tease. Critics crave the continuation: The Wrap calls it “DreamWorks’ diamond in the dreck,” while IndieWire insists “Puss’s peril is peril perfected—give the cat his ninth.” Box-office crystal balls gleam golden: Last Wish‘s $485M haul hints at $600M-plus, especially with Shrek synergy.

As production purrs toward a 2026 premiere—likely December 18, slotted post-Shrek 5‘s summer splash—Puss in Boots 3 beckons as the boldest boot yet: a fable of finality where the fearless faces fate, the vain vanquishes vanity, and the wanderer wanders home. Banderas’ bravado, Crawford’s canvas, and a cast that’s claws-out creative promise a pounce that’s poetic and pulse-pounding. In DreamWorks’ dazzling domain, where wishes are wild and wolves whistle warnings, Puss’s next nine minutes—er, lives—will be legendary. Sharpen your swords, stock your sangria; the fearless feline’s fable is far from finis. Fear the beard? Nah—fear the blank page no more. ¡Viva Puss!