Parasite director Bong Joon Ho calls it the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles.” 

Americans are spoiled for homegrown content, but many miss out on the talent and diversity of foreign-language film and TV because they find subtitles off-putting or inaccessible. For those who can overcome this barrier, Bong told audiences during his Golden Globe acceptance speech in 2020, “You will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

But many are choosing to access international content — from world-class cinema to YouTube content — with the aid of the foreign language dub. And that includes non-English speakers worldwide.

Today, Netflix dubs its shows and movies into up to 34 languages, benefitting global audiences and massively boosting viewership figures. While neither subs nor dubs are the most authentic way to experience a film or show, they’re cheaper than foreign-language remakes and can help the original creator’s vision reach a far wider international audience.

The number of foreign language dubs an American movie or TV show gets is a good indication of the international appeal of the title — and the pervasiveness of international dubbing. So, the team here at Kapwing analyzed crowdsourced data on thousands of titles and actors to see which TV shows, movies and actors have been dubbed the most.

What We Did

We analyzed the data on 2,221 movies, 5,384 TV series and 21,153 actor profiles on The Dubbing Database. Then, we tallied the total count of international dubs for every title and the top 50 franchises by box office. Finally, we counted the number of times each top actor had been dubbed across multiple versions of each movie where they had a leading role.

Key Findings

• A 1979 movie about Jesus (Jesus/The Jesus Movie) has been dubbed 1,131 times — 17 times more than any other film.
• Films in the Despicable Me franchise are dubbed an average of 51 times each, the highest figure for any top franchise.
• Will Arnett is the actor who has been dubbed the most times (708 versions).
• Dora the Explorer is the most dubbed TV show (68 versions), narrowly beating SpongeBob SquarePants (67).

Children’s Animations Among Cinema’s Most Dubbed Movies

Dubbing may be a VOD-era success story in the U.S., but it has always been the norm in mainland Europe and much of Latin America and Asia — even in the cinema. In Italy, where the Gran Premio Internazionale del Doppiaggio or “dubbing Oscars” are held, actors dub upwards of 570,000 minutes of foreign language material into Italian each year. 

But we found that children’s animations such as Ratatouille (66 versions) and Kung Fu Panda (65) dominate among the most dubbed movies. Children may be more inclined to watch dubs than subs even in countries where dubbing is generally not the norm — such as Croatia, Portugal or Japan, all of which have their own dubs of Ratatouille. 

Only one live-action picture makes our top ten — and it is something of an anomaly. The evangelical Campus Crusade organization (Cru) has made it their mission to get Jesus, a semi-anonymous 1979 adaptation of the Gospel of Luke, in front of billions of people in every country worldwide.

“God has used a film to change the lives of individuals and nations,” claims the blurb — but credit also goes to the Cru volunteers who’ve traveled globally to record upwards of 1,131 local dubs of the movie, not always with the warmest welcome.

Despicable Me and Terminator Franchises Among Most Dubbed

We found that nine of the ten most dubbed movie franchises are kid-oriented. Plus, six of these franchises are wholly or partly animated. The Despicable Me and Minions pictures have been dubbed an average of 51 times each. 

“In animation, what’s wonderful is that when you start to work with multiple nationalities, the common language becomes a visual language, rather than a spoken language, which blends beautifully with the art form,” says Despicable Me producer Chris Meledandri. Curiously, though, children are unlikely to turn subtitles off — and watching with them on may boost literacy levels.

When we appraised franchises rather than standalone movies, Terminator replaced Jesus as the only non-kid-oriented title. The Terminator movies have been dubbed an average of 24 times each. In fact, the original cast had to re-record 70% of the dialogue in Terminator 2 using automated dialogue replacement (ADR) because filming all that action was so noisy. 

While you might think the producers would do all they could to maintain Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature vocal delivery, producers denied Arnie his wish to dub the German version. Although German is his native language, Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent was considered “too rural” for a futuristic killbot — so German voice actor Thomas Dannebeeg did the job instead. Dannebeeg is also celebrated for his dubs of Hulk’s David Banner and Die Hard’s John McClane.

BoJack Horseman Star is the Most Dubbed Actor

“Please watch movies in the original version, at least the ones in which I appear,” controversial Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón recently tweeted, saying that the movie’s dubbing team gave her “an older woman’s voice imitating Mrs. Doubtfire.”

But dubbing is a two-sided affair: for every star whose voice is replaced, there’s a voice actor doing their best to match the performance. “I did so many movies when I started out, and I knew a guy in France, Germany, Italy, Japan…” says Samuel L. Jackson, whose voice has been dubbed 533 times. “And they liked me, because they worked all the time.”

Career dubbing artists are concerned that AI voices or manipulation (as hinted at by the recent controversy over accent manipulation in The Brutalist) may replace them altogether. Netflix was the first streamer to sign a SAG-AFTRA agreement on dubbing, recognizing that ethical and sensitive practices are a must.

One actor whose future seems assured is the BoJack Horseman and Despicable Me star Will Arnett — the “king of voice overs.” Thanks to his presence in the original versions of multiple animations, which lend themselves to widespread dubbing, Arnett has been dubbed 708 times. While many of the jokes from BoJack receive a thoughtful translation overseas, it seems somewhat easier to translate the show’s famous tongue-twisters into French than Japanese.

SpongeBob SquarePants Becomes SpongeBob Schwammkopf… Played by Pee-wee Herman

When Bong Joon Ho highlighted the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” he was talking about the finest in international cinema. But as much as 81% of America’s home audience is looking for a ‘second-screen experience,’ with Netflix even re-writing original scripts to make the story easier to follow for those scrolling social media on another device.

Netflix reports that, when watching the Danish post-apocalyptic sci-fi The Rain, some 85% of American viewers chose the dubbed version rather than subtitles.

Still, on an international scale, we found that children’s shows are the most likely to be dubbed. Dora the Explorer has been dubbed 68 times. In the Kannada-language version, dubbed for Indian audiences, viewers are taught to speak Hindi rather than Spanish. Nearly every other non-English Dora dub teaches English.

SpongeBob SquarePants is another popular translation, with 67 foreign dubs. In French, it’s called, coolly, Bob l'éponge. In the more literally-translated German version, SpongeBob Schwammkopf, Spongebob is played by Santiago Ziesmer — an actor who’s previously lent his voice to Ferris Bueller, Pee-wee Herman, Bugs Bunny and South Park’s Eric Cartman.

Ironically, despite the relative anonymity of voice actors, Ziesmer nearly missed out on the SpongeBob gig since his voice was already so familiar to German audiences. In the end, the producers relented because his voice was so similar to the original.

Methodology & Sources

To produce this data study, we analyzed the entirety of The Dubbing Database (including 2,221 movies, 5,384 TV series and 21,153 actor profiles) in December 2024.

To calculate the most dubbed movies and franchises, we tallied the total count of international dubs for each singular title and franchise. The franchises analyzed were the top 50 franchises in terms of box office earnings, as reported on TheNumbers database.

To determine the most dubbed actors, we focused only on actors in leading roles in the movies listed on The Dubbing Database. To achieve this, we cross-referenced the movies with IMDb's database and only included roles where the actors were listed among the "Top Actors." We included voice over roles using the logic that any international versions are dubs of the original actor's interpretation.