Gerard Butler Explains What’s Different About His Live-Action ‘Dragon’ Remake

Gerard Butler says the upcoming live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon will be scarier than the animated counterpart, but in a good way and not in the uncanny valley horrific way that the original Sonic the Hedgehog design was. After Disney turned their animated classics into live-action blockbusters, DreamWorks Animation is now getting in on the action with a remake of How to Train Your Dragon. While the movie certainly looks to go for a different tone than the original film, original co-director and later solo director on the two sequels Dean Debois will return to direct the live-action movie with Gerard Butler reprising his role as Stoick the Vast.

While speaking with The Direct, Butler spoke about how the live-action How to Train Your Dragon will differ from the original animated film:

“I made three of those movies over many years, and I always wondered, I love the animated movies, but I always wondered, ‘God, what if this was real? What if we were really there, real people, real dragons?’ And we had a chance to do that, to make it real. And I think that is one of the main differences.”

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The key difference for Butler is that these dragons will be alongside real people, making them more threatening and scarier. Butler spoke exactly about how translating the dragons from the medium of animation to live-action changes the tone of the film, saying:

When a dragon is breathing fire over a bunch of actual Viking men and women running, it feels a lot more scary than when it was animated. You have a little more you can distance yourself, but this feels much more involved and just immersive.

The teaser for How to Train Your Dragon, which was released to play before screenings of Wicked back in November 2024, indeed highlighted the different tone. While Toothless looks almost the same, for better or worse, the trailer teases a different take on How to Train Your Dragon. The more comedic elements in the animated film are being played down, with the live-action movie emphasizing a more straightforward action-fantasy story.

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The original How to Train Your Dragon trilogy certainly dealt with mature themes and could go to some dark places, but it did start from a rather kid-friendly family tone that matured with each film as the target audience grew up. Now, though, it seems to be aiming for a slightly older audience, likely the fans who saw the original film in 2010 and have now grown up.

A History of Dragons

Universal Pictures has set How to Train Your Dragon to be one of their biggest movies for the upcoming 2025 summer movie season. Its Jun. 13, 2025 release date is nearly 11 years to the date that How to Train Your Dragon 2 opened in theaters on Jun. 14, 2014. While audiences have voiced a general disinterest in Disney live-action remakes, one has to wonder if fans would still hold the same criticism of How to Train Your Dragon. Even the idea that audiences are tired of Disney live-action movies might be overblown, as Mufasa: The Lion King has grossed $653 million worldwide, showing there still is an appetite for this type of movie.

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Taking IP intended for kids and giving it a slightly more mature aesthetic has paid off for other franchises. The best example is Transformers, whose 2007 film sold itself as a summer blockbuster that older audiences could enjoy without knowing the toy line or cartoon. It made it “cool” for average moviegoers to want to see on a summer evening with their friends. That same method certainly could work for How to Train Your Dragon. Fans are expecting to get a better look at the movie on Feb. 9, 2025, as Universal Pictures is expected to debut a Super Bowl trailer for How to Train Your Dragon during the big game, which will hopefully showcase more of the action spectacle.

How to Train Your Dragon

Release Date

June 13, 2025

• Mason Thames

  Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III

• Nico Parker

  Astrid Hofferson

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