The Cost of Celebrity Voices

Having big stars in an animated film comes with a price – literally.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the cinema to see Kung Fu Panda 4. I enjoyed it, although it’s definitely the least interesting of the bunch, and not just because Po’s story came to a satisfying conclusion in the previous movie. As it turns out, courtesy of a Discord chat with the film’s co-director, the whole movie has a troubled production history, including one crucial detail: until the marketing department insisted they be included in at least one scene, the Furious Five were completely absent from the script.

That’s right, five key characters from the franchise, not to mention fan favorites, were originally not included at all. And the reason had nothing to do with story requirements, and everything to do with the budget. As the Five are voiced by Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Seth Rogen, getting them all back for the fourth movie would have been prohibitively expensive. As a result, the group appears in a largely wordless cameo (only Rogen was brought in to record a few grunts for his character).

For similar reasons, although all three of the franchise’s previous villains are featured (due to new antagonist the Chameleon’s shapeshifting abilities), only one of them – Tai Lung, the first movie’s Big Bad – has a speaking role, presumably because Ian McShane is less expensive than Gary Oldman and J.K. Simmons. It’s the main inconvenience when casting big names in animated films: at some point, keeping them around can, and will, turn into an issue.