With Dreamworks Animation experiencing some very public woes over the last few years, the company may have to bring out its biggest gun to save the day as Antonio Banderas has hinted to Empire that Shrek may be a part of Puss in Boots 2: Nine Lives & 40 Thieves.

“I heard some rumors that Shrek may be coming back,” Banderas said. “That would be great. Shrek doing a cameo… in MY movie? Uh, huh! Yeah, I’d like that.”

The sequel to 2011’s Puss in Boots, itself a spin-off from the Shrek series, was originally scheduled for release on December 21, 2018 under original director Chris Miller until a major company-wide restructuring initiative (which included 500 layoffs) pushed it back into development.

“They are restructuring the script now,” Banderas added. “We started… but that’s the process. A lot of people participate in the creation of the script and the story and the narrative, everything. And they include you! They take you to California and you read the script with them, give them your ideas, and a couple of months later you see a new script where everything has been touched up.”

Guillermo del Toro is expected to return as executive producer, with 20th Century Fox serving as distributor. Mike Meyers voiced the green ogre Shrek in a series of four films which grossed over three billion dollars worldwide, while the Shrek-less Puss in Boots film grossed an impressive $555 million on its own. 2010’s Shrek Forever After was touted to be the “final film” in that series, although Dreamworks Animation CEO hinted last year that a fifth film could be in the cards.

“We like to let them have a little bit of time to rest,” Katzenberg said. “But I think you can be confident that we’ll have another chapter in the ‘Shrek’ series. We’re not finished, and more importantly, neither is he.”