Upon watching a report about Shrek 3 on TeleMadrid's "Madrid Directo" I started thinking about English language (or other langugage) movies dubbed into Spanish.

The report on Shrek 3 particularly made me think because it's an animated movie starring, among others, Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, and Antonio Banderas. All three were recently in Madrid promoting the movie.

But then I started to think, "Hey. 99.9% of Spaniards going to see 'Shrek 3' will see it in Spanish and so NONE of the voices of Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, nor, probably, Antonio Banderas will be heard by those movie-going Spaniards.

So why do these actors promote the animated movie in Spain if their voices will never be heard? The simple and obvious answer is, "It's their job." But isn't this a deception in the case of ANIMATED movies? I understand a NON-animated movie being promoted by the actors because it's their faces and bodies onscreen even though their voices are not.

And specifically regarding Antonio Banderas, he's Spanish, yes, but I'm rather certain his SPANISH voice is not being used for the part of the swashbuckling cat. And why? I suppose because the company contracted to DUB ("doblar") the movie isn't willing to pay Antonio Banderas the money he'd require when they can pay Juan Carlos, a professional "dubber", a tiny fraction of the salary.

I started thinking of this earlier today when I was channel surfing the TDT TV stations and came upon a channel which was showing some teen soap opera. There were no voices in the program whatsoever, just sounds affects of people walking, soccer-playing-kids in the background, rustling of clothing, etcetera, but no voices. I have my LCD TV set to an "English" format so, I'm only guessing, that since an "English version" wasn't available the voice audio was left blank or absent. But this only happens on some channels, not all of them. For example, movies/programs on TVE1 are broadcast in Spanish no matter their origin. But most American sitcoms/movies on TeleMadrid are broadcast in their original version, in English with the original voices. Other times the American TeleMadrid programs are only broadcast in Spanish.

Any comments or insight? Saludos, MadridMan

MM, I was surfing the web yesterday and "happened" upon an Antonio Banderas website (i'm a HUGE fan) and a blog about him doing a recent interview in London. Antonio stated in the interview that he dubbed Shrek 3 in Spanish AND in Italian!
PRetty impressive!
I understand what you wrote, but I think maybe Antonio would prefer to do his own dubbing for his own country....He seems like a pretty cool guy!

p.s. I was surfing the net trying to see if I would catch the Shrek 3 premiere in Madrid (and increase my chances of seeing Antonio in person)....but it appears that it has already happened.

I saw Shrek 2 in Spanish and it was definitely Antonio Banderas who did the voice.

i accept what you are saying and Antonio Banderas spoke in his native tongue and Italian, which is yes impressive, but what when the film is in Chinese or French? then surely his voice is then dubbed

Woo Hoo! Glad to hear that about Antonio Banderas' voice. Sure he was paid a kind of "bonus" for the extra voices.

But in the other cases of Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz (doesn't speak Spanish? - NOT! ) it still seems strange to me that they're here promoting a movie where their voices are not heard. The "dubbers"(!) should be promoting Shrek 3 instead!

Saludos, MadridMan

Antonio Banderas, a component of the spanish humoristic duo called "Cruz y Raya" (I can't remember his name right now)and Michael Robinson, a former soccer player and TV commentator, are the more important dubbers of the film in spanish.

Edu

The best Website to know all about the Spanish dubbing is http://eldoblaje.com (sorry, only Spanish version available. Hey!, wasn't it predictable?)

This is the "Shrek 2" page at eldoblaje.com . Actually, both Cruz y Raya members are starring: Jose Sanchez Mota dubs Donkey (Eddie Murphy in the original version), and Juan Muñoz dubs Shrek (Mike Myers). Michael Robinson does what Larry King did, the Ugly Stepsister.

Bonus link: "Shrek" page at eldoblaje.com . As you can see, the cast is coherent from the original to the sequel. So, "Shrek 3" is expected to be, too.

It's very common that the actors starring a film come to Madrid for the premiere. It's makes sure that all media will cover the presentation and will give a lot of publicity.

But, what does it happen when the stars are not real people? Can you imagine someone dressed in a Shrek costume at the debut? Strange and funny, isn't it?

So, although people are not going to listen the voices of those famous stars is understandable that the distribution company prefers them to the not very famous dubbers.

Definetely Antonio Banderas(Anthony Flags) is going to dub himself again.
http://www.shrekinternational.com/intl/es/

I'm looking forward to see the film, the others were great fun.

A lot of European countries show English-language movies mainly in VO, so I would imagine that they do a European tour for all the openings and don't skip the Spanish premiere just because it's mainly (but not all) dubbed here. When the Spanish people doing the dub are famous (like when Maribel Verdu did the penguin mama in Viaje del Emperador) they go to the premier, too.