20 Things You Didn’t Know About Beauty and the Beast
LOS ANGELES – FEBRUARY 3: Actor Jackie Chan arrives at the premiere of ‘Shanghai Knights’ at the El Capitan Theatre on February 3, 2003 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
11. Jackie Chan played the Beast in the Mandarin Chinese dub of the film
Yes, seriously. That Jackie Chan. The one that was in Rush Hour and Shanghai Knights. The Hong Kong martial artist, actor, film director, producer, stuntman, and singer also played the Beast.
Specifically, he played the Beast in the Mandarin Chinese dub of the film. Chan took on both the voice acting and singing for the role. Are you surprised by this? Fans of his kung fu movies might not know this, but Chan is also an accomplished vocalist. He’s received operatic training and has, in fact, become a Cantopop and Mandopop star with many different albums to his name.
Disney is a big overseas market, too. Even when it comes to the process of recording their films in other languages, the animation studio rarely cuts corners. Today, Disney has about 85 employees around the world just in its character voices division. A big animated movie is usually dubbed in about 40 different languages (live action films are more often dubbed into 12 to 15 languages).
In Hong Kong, where a majority of people speak a version of Cantonese, films are rarely dubbed – the number of speakers is simply too small. However, numerous films are dubbed into Mandarin, which is spoken by a larger number of Chinese people. Dubbing artists are highly considered. It’s also a handy opportunity for Chinese censors to modify or delete lines that they deem unacceptable.