Still looking to replicate Disney's (albeit hit-and-miss) efforts to convert its animated canon into live-action/CG concoctions, DreamWorks is moving forward with a real people-CG creatures take on How To Train Your Dragon. And while many of the leads are understandably being re-cast with younger actors, one is making the leap from the successful 'toon outings the new film: Gerard Butler.
The actor, who played Viking chief Stoic the Vast for the three main movies and one TV movie spin-off, will be donning hair, make-up and armour to play the man in live-action. He'll likely be back despairing of his son Hiccup (to be played in the new movie by The Black Phone's Mason Thames) underperformance as a viking, but once more impressed when the lad forms a bond with a dragon named Toothless (somewhere, Geek Queen Helen O'Hara just let out an involuntary "squee!").
Nico Parker, no stranger to animated-to-live-action conversion jobs after Dumbo (but more recently seen in TV's The Last Of Us), is playing Astrid, Hiccup's fellow warrior and love interest. Dean DeBlois, meanwhile, who has overseen the successful cartoon trilogy, is back to write, direct and produce. The film should be in cinemas on 13 June next year.