How to Train Your Dragon Star Reveals How Live-Action Movie Pays Off “Epic” Dreams

How to Train Your Dragon is making the transition from animation to live-action in record time, with a remake of the classic DreamWorks animated feature hitting theaters 15 years after the original debuted. This trend of turning animated movies into live-action remakes has been mostly frustrating, but How to Train Your Dragon does have one major difference working in its favor: Original director and franchise creator Dean DeBlois is helming the live-action version as well. He’s also brought original star Gerard Butler along to reprise his role as Viking ruler Stoick.

Butler is the only How to Train Your Dragon star that has made the jump to live-action alongside DeBlois, embodying the larger-than-life persona of Hiccup’s strict father with more than just his voice. While speaking to ComicBook about his role in Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which hits theaters in January, Butler opened up a bit about the challenge of taking the same character from animation to live-action.

“It’s a bit of many things, there’s always a little bit of weirdness but there was also a huge amount of challenge, anticipation, excitement,” Butler told us. “One thing I’d always done when I was making the animated movies is see this animated character and go, ‘My god, imagine if I actually had to be him. Imagine I actually had to be that voice and those expressions and how he moves.’ And suddenly they went, ‘We want you to do that.’ So it was a challenge to make him so big and strong, but then also in a way where it’s not completely caricature so that an audience can come into the different layers of that character and his relationship with his son.

“But also to be in those worlds for real, which is what I love about making movies,” he continued. “You jump into these worlds that we make up and that’s fun. But obviously, How to Train Your Dragon is an epic example of stepping into these worlds.”

[RELATED: Watch the First Trailer for the Live-Action How to Train Your Dragon]

It’s rare to have the same actor get the opportunity to voice a popular character in an animated project, then to see them reprise the role in a live-action format. The best recent example is Katee Sackhoff, who voiced Bo-Katan Kryze in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, before eventually playing the live-action version of the character in The Mandalorian.

The new DCU franchise, spearheaded by James Gunn and Peter Safran, has already revealed plans to keep consistent casting across all formats, for all of its major characters. Frank Grillo, for example, stars in the new Creature Commandos animated series, and will continue the role in live-action form in Peacemaker Season 2 and the upcoming Superman movie.

As far as How to Train Your Dragon is concerned, none of the other stars from the animated film made the jump alongside Butler. That doesn’t mean they won’t appear in another capacity, as DeBlois could always call on them for cameos in the film.

How to Train Your Dragon hits theaters on June 13, 2025.