Disney Character Voices International credit on Muppets Most Wanted
Por que no se llama La Rana Rene
A video produced in 2011 explaining Kermit's name change in Latin America.
Disney Character Voices International (DCVI) is a division of the Walt Disney Company and more specifically sprang from the domestic Disney Character Voices, formed in 1988 to ensure consistency in established character voices across formats (including theme park attractions). Disney Character Voices also selects voice matches when the original actors are deceased or unavailable (especially for ancillary projects like ice shows, talking toys, video games, and until the late 1990s most story albums).
Disney Character Voices International fills the same function for the global dubs of Disney and Disney-owned productions. Apart from casting and voice direction, the division also handles script translations, song adaptation, and localization or subtitling of on-screen text (title cards, newspaper headlines, prologue text, etc.) For the Muppets, Disney Character Voices International first became involved in 1992 with the release of The Muppet Christmas Carol. This differed from earlier dubs of The Muppet Show and movies, which were often left to local broadcasters or dubbing studios. One change instituted by Disney was recasting Miss Piggy in several countries (including Germany, France, and Mexico) where a voice actress was the established voice. Male actors were used to better match the original falsetto vocals by Frank Oz. While this led to complete recasts in several countries, Germany actually remained more consistent during the 1990s. Apart from Miss Piggy, the dubs from Die Muppets Weihnachtsgeschichte (Muppet Christmas Carol) through the German dub of Muppets Tonight primarily used the established Die Muppet Show voice actors until recasting became necessary for deceased performers.
New dubs were sometimes produced of earlier Muppet films which Disney released on home video (such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper). While the division was not involved with every Disney-owned localization for television (such as the various Dinosaurs dubs), it also encompassed Bear in the Big Blue House. With the sale of the Muppets to the Walt Disney Company in 2004, DCVI's oversight became more expansive and also included appearances by the characters in Disney produced TV series (as for the Disney Channel or ABC).
With the release of 2011's The Muppets, the first Disney-produced Muppet theatrical film since Muppet Treasure Island, new changes occurred for the Muppets in several countries. Mirroring adjustments to the original Disney characters (dropping localized names such as Tribilín for Goofy), the international name of Kermit the Frog became standardized as Kermit and the translation for frog (replacing La Rana René in Mexico, Caco in Brazil, and Gustavo in Spain). Phrases such as "Los Teleñecos," used in Spain since the 1970s, were replaced so that "Muppets" was used consistently ("Os Marretas" in Portugal was an exception). In Hungary, older dubs such as that of The Muppet Christmas Carol (originally produced by broadcaster Magyar Televízió) were redone to use the voices selected for The Muppets (2011).
In addition to the many puppet projects, Disney Character Voices International also oversaw the dubbing of the 2018 Muppet Babies series, which again favored the US original. Thus Muppet Babies remained the same in both Mexico and Spain (as compared to the original Los Pequeños Muppets and Los Pequeñecos respectively).