This summer, audiences return to Berk, but it’s a different island than the one we’re used to. Fifteen years after our first flight with Hiccup and Toothless, we return to the world of Vikings and dragons in live action in How to Train Your Dragon. As part of Collider’s Exclusive Preview event for the upcoming slate of Summer movies for 2025, we are thrilled to exclusively unveil a brand-new image from the movie. One of the movie’s returning stars from the beloved animated classic, Gerard Butler, couldn’t hold back his pride, as he told Collider:
“It has been a huge piece of my heart to be part of this franchise. This time, instead of stepping into the recording booth, I stepped into Stoick’s boots, strapped on his armor, put his helmet on my head and literally entered the world of Berk. I cannot wait for audiences around the world to get swept up in this heartwarming, hilarious and thrilling adventure.”
In our exclusive first look at the film, we see Butler’s Stoick the Vast in all his vast, stoic glory, with the world’s greatest beard on display. This man was made to be a Viking, holding court among his people.
Dean DeBlois’ Dreams Came True With a Return To ‘How To Train Your Dragon’
To celebrate the film’s upcoming release, Collider’s Maggie Lovitt sat down with writer-director Dean DeBlois as part of our Exclusive Preview of this summer’s biggest movies.
For DeBlois, returning to Berk in live action wasn’t just a directing challenge, but a chance to go full circle. As he told Lovitt:
“It’s a dream come true, really. Everything we design in animation, we go from concept art to a CGI creation of that world, and we try to make it feel tactile and grounded and have all those real-world cues. But in this case, we would design it and make up blueprints and actually build the whole world, which is kind of crazy. We had a backlot in Belfast that accommodated our training arena and our entire village, and then we had sound stages that accommodated all the interiors, and so you could walk around in them and just be in that space. To me, it’s kind of amazing. I’ve always been fascinated by sound sets, and to be able to walk onto ours and just to be able to touch everything and walk into all the rooms and all the buildings and be in that world is something that you can’t quite describe fully. I was squealing with glee every day we got to do it.”
Despite the flexibility of animation, DeBlois found that live-action brought a unique sense of authenticity that’s hard to replicate in a digital environment. When asked if there was anything he couldn’t do with the animated feature that he finally got to bring to life in this adaptation, he said: “Yes. Animation is very versatile, especially now with the tools; you can pretty much create any vision you have. But in live-action, there’s something that’s just so grounded about it that it kind of brings with it a certain authenticity. You’re no longer leaning as much into fantasy, and by having real actors embodying those roles, it becomes some sort of an exercise in truth.”
“How much can you have Gerard Butler wearing a 90-pound costume, embodying someone as bold and brazen as Stoick the Vast on camera and not have it feel like, ‘Oh, it’s Gerard Butler at a Renaissance fair?’” DeBlois laughed. “It’s got to come through with a lot of truth and authenticity, so you really lean into the actors and their understanding of the character and the interplay between actors and letting scenes develop and being nimble enough to accommodate changes as they present themselves, even when you’re trying to work through a very ambitious day with many shots.”
DeBlois continued, adding that the film was “part staging a play“, and that it was important that the creative team be “responsive and sensitive enough to allow scenes to really develop and have a cadence of dialogue and those moments where they’re listening to one another and making sure that the emphasis is always on the truth of it all. That’s quite different because in animation we manipulate everything, even down to the recordings of the actors,” he explained. “We can sort of cut and paste our favorite bits from different takes to find the exact line read as the way we want it, whereas I think in live-action, you’re waiting for those moments and being open to the surprises that might happen in that process.”
As for getting Butler to reprise his role in live-action, DeBlois explained that embodying Stoick took more than just putting on a horned helmet. When asked about creating his elaborate costume and making sure it felt real, he told Collider:
“Well, Gerard Butler has a certain physique that is not entirely congruous with Stoick the Vast, and so it’s sort of beefing up his silhouette and giving him all of those cues like a big square, woolen rug of a cape. The under costume expands his shape and gives him all of that mass in all the right places. It starts with the design, of course, but then lots of trial and error with the building of the costume itself and trying to make it as flexible and wearable as possible because it is, as he said, quite heavy, and it could have been much more so had we not really put the thought into, ‘Where can we lighten the load, but give him all of the room to act as well?’
You don’t want to encumber the actor at the same time. They not only need to look the part, they need to be able to act the part. Having him feel authentically like a Viking chief is a big part of the conversation, so working with Lindsay Pugh and her very, very talented group of costume designers and builders and watching them work their magic was really educational for me because it goes so far beyond coming up with a cool design and having our CG characters walking around. We want to make costumes that people want to cosplay, so how do you make it really cool and inspiring so that people want to inhabit that world and wear clothing like those characters?”
Casting ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Was Based on “Spirit” Rather Than Appearance
One of the most crucial aspects of the movie came in casting the main characters. While the animated versions of Hiccup, Astrid, and company are iconic, DeBlois made clear that for the live-action version, finding actors who felt right mattered more than physical resemblance, praising casting director Lucy Bevan for finding the right people, which he feels they have done, in the shape of Nico Parker and Mason Thames. The cast of How To Train Your Dragon will also include Nick Frost as Gobber the Belch, Julian Dennison (Deadpool 2) as Fishlegs Ingerman and Ruth Codd (Fall of the House of Usher) as Phlegma, alongside the likes of Gabriel Howell (Bodies), Bronwyn James (Wicked), Harry Trevaldwyn (Smothered), BAFTA nominee Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Murray McArthur (Game of Thrones).
Further elaborating on the casting process, DeBlois said:
“Astrid is a good example because she doesn’t look like her animated counterpart, necessarily, but she was the only actress who came in that could deliver dialogue that I’d written, which was quite harsh, directed toward Hiccup, but she managed to do it in a way that felt more like a sports team coach than anything else. So, she held herself to a high standard, and she expected the same of her fellow team players, and it just made for a really great dynamic without being mean-spirited. So, even though there were people who would come in who looked like their animated counterparts, they weren’t always the right choice. I think, more importantly, I was trying to keep my mind focused on what the spirit of the character is. Knowing that we were taking some liberties in this interpretation, it allowed for departures from those animated counterparts, and I like that. I thought it was, again, a really educational process.”
For those who love the animated version, DeBlois is clear that this won’t just be a 1:1 recreation of the original film, and that’s evident in the cast as well. He explained, “That was quite eye-opening just to be in the room and in the scene with the characters and really get the sense of who got the spirit of what this character is supposed to be, instead of simply trying to find Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Chris Mintz-Plasse, and T.J. Miller. No one’s going to replace those actors. They have a very specific sensibility that they brought to the characters in the animated films. So, finding Hiccup, for example, we didn’t want someone who was just going to be Jay Baruchel; Jay Baruchel is unique. He’s very much his own character in every movie that he’s in. So, I think finding somebody who essentially embodied Hiccup’s specific traits was the mindset we had to get into, and then looking at a really large swath of actors without being restricted to simply what a character looks like.”
The live-action film looks to expand on the story from the original animated How to Train Your Dragon, as DeBlois explained:
“Part of that is that the mythology of the story is expanded from the animated movies, and we wanted to explain why this particular tribe came together and why they landed on that island. So, in order to increase the urgency and deepen the mythology, we thought the Vikings, having traveled far and wide, gathered the best dragon fighters from all sorts of cultures that they had interacted with to eliminate a common enemy, which is dragons being a problem everywhere.”
As far as the cast they landed on, DeBlois says he has “no regrets,” praising the talents of Parker and Thames in particular: “They’re so great. They really are. I had no regrets whatsoever because they just continually brought it. They’re such talented young actors, and they completely get the characters. They grew up with the movies, and so there wasn’t a whole lot of deep explanation as to who these characters are or why they act the way they act. They know them.”
DeBlois went on to share special praise for Thames, who will be taking flight this summer on the back of Toothless, the gorgeous Night Fury dragon, calling his understanding of the character “instinctual.” He elaborated, saying, “Mason, in particular, was one that I would always, in the beginning in prep, say, ‘Okay, let’s talk about his backstory. What do you want to know about his childhood?’ And he’d say, ‘I just get him. I grew up with these movies. These were my childhood. They were my Star Wars, and so I get who this guy is. I know why he acts the way he does. I know why he’s got the self-deprecating humor. He’s a bit gangly. He was sort of born into the wrong world, in a way, where the qualities that everyone aspires to are strength and conviction in the Viking way, and he’s just at odds with that.’ Mason just completely got that, even though he’s a kid from Dallas, Texas.”
‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Is Coming to Epic Universe
Though he’s been to Berk himself shooting the movie, DeBlois hasn’t yet visited the new How to Train Your Dragon land at Universal’s Epic Universe, but he knows exactly what’s coming. When asked if he’d been to the park yet, he told Collider:
“No, not in person yet. I think I’ll have an opportunity to as we roll out the film toward its release, but I’ve only seen basically what everyone else has seen on YouTube. We did have a presentation fairly early on when they were already underway with building it, so they gave us a brief presentation of what the land will feature, and what the design aesthetic is and all that. It’s largely based on How to Train Your Dragon 2, when the dragons have already moved in, and they’ve made accommodations for them. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.”
How to Train Your Dragon opens in theaters on June 13, 2025 — start planning your cosplay now. Keep checking back throughout the week as we debut exclusive looks at the hottest summer releases.
- Release Date
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June 13, 2025
- Runtime
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116 Minutes
- Director
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Dean DeBlois
- Writers
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Dean DeBlois
- Franchise(s)
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How to Train Your Dragon
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Mason Thames
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III
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Nico Parker
Astrid Hofferson
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