Gerard Butler Almost Missed His ‘How To Train Your Dragon' Return

Forbes

20 hours ago

"Gerard Butler coming back was a given from the start. However, I was told he was unavailable," recalls Dean DeBlois, writer-director of the live-action remake How to Train Your Dragon. "He had back-to-back projects, so he could not be considered for the role of Stoik the Vast, which was bizarre, disorientating, and heartbreaking."
"Then the actor's strike happened in 2023, and that moved a bunch of projects around, so suddenly Gerard was available, coming out of that strike, for a short window where he could join us. He wanted to do it, and he had the opportunity. I can't imagine the movie without Gerard, but there was a time when we were being forced to consider a movie without him."
DeBlois, who also helmed the original animated trilogy that grossed over $1.64 billion at the worldwide box office, and Butler aren't the only ones returning for the reimaging. The composer of the original's music is also back on board, another key part of the writer-director's vision for the reboot that came as "a complete surprise."
"I thought I had put these characters in this world to bed with the third Dragon film. I was working on other, very diverse projects, writing those scripts, setting up the projects at different studios, and then I got the phone call for this, totally out of the blue," the writer-director recalls. "My immediate instinct was that I didn't want to see someone else's version of this. There's a way into this where we could embellish those things that were a little shortchanged in the animated film and lean into the bells and whistles that live-action could bring us in terms of making it palpable, kinetic, and visceral.' I got excited, and I called John Powell, the composer for the original films, and I said, 'Talk me out of this if you think it's a bad idea, but I couldn't possibly do it without your music, and he said, 'If you're in, I'm in because this could be a nostalgic hug to fans of the franchise and open it up to a whole new audience.'"
As with the 2010 original film, How to Train Your Dragon is set on the Viking isle of Berk, where an ancient threat endangers both the human occupants and dragons alike. However, an unlikely friendship between Hiccup, the son of Butler's Viking leader, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, proves to be the key to both species creating a new future together. How to Train Your Dragon lands in theaters on Friday, June 13, 2025, having already grossed $550,905 at the worldwide box office.
Returning to Berk and its inhabitants 15 years after his journey started has also proved to be healing for Deblois. That's something else he wasn't expecting.
"I learned so much making this, not only as a filmmaker but also about these characters and the catharsis this story provides going through the whole thing," he explains. "I lost my father when I was 19, and so it's directly related to Hiccup in the sense that I was, for a while, a cantankerous disappointment to him, but I never had the moment of amends. When you go through the process of writing a story where you can paint that perfect picture and get beyond the hurdle, there's something therapeutic about it. I've both learned a greater sense of what it is that I need out of life and how I could channel that back into the work that I'm doing."
A sequel has already been given the go-ahead at Universal, and a third may well be on the cards if box office history repeats itself.
"On the animated movie, I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg at DreamWorks asking me to come up with ideas for a sequel," DeBlois shares. "I said, 'Let's do a trilogy because then it's a coming of age over three acts.' He said, 'Fine, but if Dragon 2 fails, there is no three,' which is just a truth, right? If we continue to make good movies that the world embraces, there may be an opportunity for yet another one. For now, there is a live-action Dragon 2. Universal has great confidence in this movie; that's very heartening to me, and it means I have more opportunity to improve upon material that I've written in the past."
Will the already announced live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2 follow the storyline of its animated namesake?
"I think so," the filmmaker muses. "We've reached that testing point right now on how this movie will be received out there in the public. Do people like a faithful retelling? Did they want something that was a story 'inspired by' How to Train Your Dragon? I think time will tell, but for the time being, tracing forward this idea, moving into the second act of a three-act story of a coming-of-age of this character, means that I can continue to lean into my love of The Empire Strikes Back and what that did for Star Wars, and what Dragon 2 is hopefully doing for the How to Train Your Dragon universe, where everything gets bigger, more dangerous, more interesting, costumes get cooler. The world expands, so all of that stuff."
When it comes to investment in the franchise, Universal has laid out its cards with confidence. In May, Universal Epic Universe opened in Orlando, Florida, with an entire world in the theme park inspired by and themed around the original films. DeBlois and his cast were there for the opening, and he still can't get over what he saw.
"I walked through that portal, and I was confronted with the most faithful depiction of the movie that we had made. It's How to Train Your Dragon 2 in three dimensions," he enthuses. "The production designer, Pierre-Olivier Vincent, would be so proud because they followed his designs in such a faithful way. I was overwhelmed. It was so much bigger than I thought it was going to be. I wasn't prepared for the level of detail. Nothing was overlooked, not even the manhole covers. You walk into the restrooms, and even the placards for men and women are themed as dragons. It was very well done. I'm still getting my head around it because to think that we put pen to paper and created a story and built a world that is embraced to the degree that a major movie studio is willing to sink billions of dollars into creating a theme park around blows my mind."
Following in the footsteps of the original films, How to Train Your Dragon is already proving to be fire at the box office. Aside from the exhilarating storytelling, DeBlois believes he knows what it is in the DNA that appeals to so many people worldwide.
"The cultural theme that unites them all is the wish fulfillment of the bond with an animal," he says."It's something baked into us as humans that when you see it, realized in this way, such a powerful beast but one that needs you, that is as vulnerable as you are, and you can explore the world together as one another's best friends, I think that travels borders around the world, and people do respond to it. They love Toothless. He's the favorite character."
t's the connection that generations of fans now have with the films that DeBlois completely understands. It's something he has experienced firsthand as he has grown and his love of cinema has deepened.
"For me, the most important thing, and the thing that I've taken away and those indelible films of my youth as well, has to do with wonder and heart. It's not about being sentimental, but genuinely earned emotion," the filmmaker explains. "If you dress that up in a world of fantasy, then I'm there. When it comes to my favorite movies, E.T. is one of them, and so is The Black Stallion and Harold and Maude. I love stories where disparate characters come together for a period of time, and they have such a profound impact on one another that, although they may go their separate ways, they are forever changed."
While he's going to be deep in Dragon for the foreseeable future, DeBlois still has projects he wants to see on the big screen. When asked if there is anything else from the back catalog he would like to reimagine; there's one thing he's always surprised people want to talk about.
"It's so funny to me when I run across people who even know what The Raccoons is," he laughs as he references a 1985 animated series out of his native Canada. "When I met Jay Baruchel, the voice of Hiccup in the animated movies, he was almost in tears when he realized I'd worked on The Raccoons. It was formative for both him and me, as it was my first job. I went from working as a line cook at 17 years old to having a job at Hinton Animation Studios, drawing in-betweens for The Raccoons. I don't have the same fondness for it, but I appreciate it when I do come across fans."
"As far as movies that I still hope to get to make outside of How to Train Your Dragon, there are a few out there. There's one called The Banshee, which is an Irish ghost story set during the famine that I'd set up at Disney. It still resides there, but it hasn't aged in my mind. It still has a really poignant beauty to it that speaks to that theme of characters coming together and going their separate ways, forever changed."