You get more out of the characters... you can feel their souls

The cast of live-action remake How To Train Your Dragon - including Gerard Butler and Nick Frost - on taking the popular children's story to the next level. By ELLA WALKER

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Academy Award nominations and grossed more than $1.6billion - has returned to direct, write and produce the remake.

He's joined once more by Gerard Butler, 55, who reprises his role as viking leader Stoick.

The 300 and Olympus Has Fallen actor believes live-action takes the HTTYD stories to “the next level.”

“You get more out of the characters because they're more relatable, they’re real, you're looking in their eyes, you can feel their souls,” he says, arguing the originals are now 15 years old and technology has moved on.

“We really can create a whole other world now,” he says. “That's the power of cinema, the places it can take you visually and emotionally, and this movie is really a testament to that.”

Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz actor Nick Frost, 53, who plays Gobber the Belch who trains young recruits to fight dragons says it was really important to be “respectful” to the animations, but “as long as you can work within the parameters the original films set down, I don’t think it can do anything but deepen the lore.”