Inside Universal's live-action How To Train Your Dragon

In 2020, Dean DeBlois publicly blasted live-action remakes of animated films as "lazy" studio endeavors.

- Ashley Spencer

NEW YORK - In 2020, Dean DeBlois publicly blasted live-action remakes of animated films as "lazy" studio endeavors.

The Canadian writer-director had, along with American filmmaker Chris Sanders, made the 2002 Disney animated Lilo & Stitch and the 2010 DreamWorks Animation release How To Train Your Dragon.

DeBlois said he viewed such remakes as "a missed opportunity to put something original into the world."

Then, two years later, he received a call from Universal Pictures president Peter Cramer asking if he would be interested in directing a live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon.

"At the expense of seeming like a hypocrite, I thought, well, I'm either going to sit here and pout and watch somebody else do it," the 55-year-old said in a video interview, "or I could jump in and shoulder the blame or help to change the narrative."

With the reboot — which is showing in Singapore cinemas — earning over US$197 million (S$252 million) worldwide, DeBlois is now enthusiastically attached to the type of movie he formerly criticized.

A lot could have gone wrong. He had never made a live-action feature before Universal put him in charge of the US$150-million remake, and the genre as a whole is facing increased skepticism from audiences and studios alike.

Yet, so pleased were the Universal executives after seeing a cut of the new Dragon, Mr Cramer said, that they rushed to greenlight a live-action adaptation of How To Train Your Dragon 2, to be directed and written by DeBlois and released in theaters in 2027.

How To Train Your Dragon — a retelling of the story of Hiccup, a pacifist Viking teenager who forms a bond with a once-feared dragon named Toothless on the Isle of Berk — represents the studio's first foray into live-action adaptations of animated films.