The live-action How to Train Your Dragon has unveiled its trailer, and the movie’s director is grateful for the chance to tell his story in a fresh way.
After debuting an excerpt during Super Bowl LIX, Universal Pictures released the full trailer ahead of the film hitting theaters June 13. The live-action feature is a remake of DreamWorks Animation‘s hit animated movie of the same name that was released in 2010.
Writer-director Dean DeBlois‘ new How to Train Your Dragon stars Mason Thames as Hiccup and Nico Parker as Astrid. Rounding out the cast are Gerard Butler, Nick Frost and Julian Dennison. DeBlois, who has been involved with the franchise since its start, wrote and directed the new project that is based on the 2010 animated film he co-directed with Chris Sanders.
During a trailer-unveiling event that was attended by The Hollywood Reporter, DeBlois discussed the origins of the new movie. “With the rushed production schedule and the limited resources that we had on that first movie for DreamWorks, there were things that we skipped past that we could have maybe done a little more justice to — some of the characters, some of the depth of relationships and the immersive action,” he said. “It’s a reimagining that holds quite faithful to the story and yet finds moments where we could enrich character relationships, give a bit of depth, give a little bit of mythology that might have been lacking in that original.”
DeBlois explained that he always felt the character of Astrid “was a little underserved” in the original film: “Nico Parker plays Astrid, [and] that feeds into this idea that she has come from a different culture, that she is a descendant of one of those prized dragon-fighting warriors that were collected by Vikings in different places. She hopes to be chief of this tribe one day. She’s got great ambition, and what’s nice about it is that it creates a conflict between she and Hiccup.”
The director added that the remake’s team was careful not to make the dragons too anthropomorphic. “The challenge has been upon our animators to do exactly what our DreamWorks animators had to do, which is watch a whole lot of dog, cat and horse videos and find those cues that we humans interpret as being the attitudes that we want to be expressed, so that we don’t sacrifice personality,” DeBlois said. “With every dragon, there’s a sense of reinvention because some of them were cartoonier than others.”
How to Train Your Dragon’s new trailer shows Hiccup telling Astrid about his connection with Toothless, the dragon that Hiccup has befriended. “I’m the first Viking who wouldn’t kill a dragon,” Hiccup admits it the trailer. This leads Astrid to add, “First to ride one, though.”
The franchise, which includes two theatrical sequels, is inspired by the book series from author Cressida Cowell. Serving as producers on the new movie are DeBlois, Marc Platt and Adam Siegel.
Watch the trailer below.
