Dean DeBlois wrote and directed all three of the animated How to Train Your Dragon movies, which were inspired by the series of books by written by Cressida Cowell. Now DeBlois is set to write, direct, and produce a live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon – and he’s assembling a strong cast for it. Mason Thames (The Black Phone) is set to play Hiccup, with Nico Parker (The Last of Us) as Astrid and Gerard Butler, who voiced Stoick the Vast, the leader of the Viking clan and Hiccup’s father in the animated films, will be reprising the role in live-action. Now The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that Nick Frost – whose credits include Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End, Paul, and Fighting with My Family – has been cast as the Viking character Gobber the Belch, the trusted friend and advisor of Stoick.
How to Train Your Dragon focuses on the special friendship between a young and unheroic Viking boy named Hiccup, and Toothless, an injured dragon he nurses back to health. The movies chronicled Hiccup and Toothless’ quest to combat humanity’s prejudice against dragons, the ache of overcoming the loss of a parent, and first love.
DeBlois producing the live-action film alongside Marc Platt, who is producing through his Universal-based Marc Platt Productions, and that company’s president, Adam Siegel. VP of production Lexi Barta is overseeing the project for Universal Pictures.
Released in 2010, How to Train Your Dragon was followed by two-feature-length sequels (How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)) and five short films: Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon (2010), Book of Dragons (2010), Gift of the Night Fury (2011), Dawn of the Dragon Racers (2014), and How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming (2019).
I’ll be honest, I have never seen a single minute of any How to Train Your Dragon feature or short film, but after seeing how many there are and how popular this franchise apparently is, I’m starting to think maybe I should give it a try.
The live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon is scheduled to reach theatres on June 13, 2025. Are you looking forward to the film, and are you glad to hear that Nick Frost has been cast as Gobber the Belch? Let us know by leaving a comment below.