How to Train Your Dragon Continues Winning Over Summer Audiences
By Runway Magazine Editorial Team | June 6, 2026
The live action remake of How to Train Your Dragon was released on June 13, 2025. It is still being discussed as one of the year’s most significant family movie success stories. Directed by Dean DeBlois — who helmed all three animated films in the original DreamWorks trilogy — the remake earned $636.6 million worldwide on a $150 million budget. By July 2025, it had crossed the $550 million mark. It was only the fifth film of the year to reach that milestone. The four ahead of it — Ne Zha 2, Lilo & Stitch, A Minecraft Movie, and Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning — represent 2025’s commercial elite. Arriving on Netflix in February 2026, the film continues drawing new audiences who missed its theatrical run.
The DreamWorks movie is also historically notable. This film is the studio’s first live-action release since DreamWorks Animation was spun off from the original live-action studio in 2004. That context gives the project institutional weight beyond its commercial performance. For DreamWorks Animation, this was a statement about the studio’s capabilities in a new format.
The Film: What They Got Right
Dean DeBlois made a specific creative decision for the live-action remake. He did not attempt to reinvent the story. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as “a spectacular, immersive journey deeper into a world that fans already know and love” — less a standalone achievement than a special edition of a favourite. That approach carries risk. An overly faithful adaptation can read as pointless. A shot-for-shot remake invites the obvious question: why remake it at all? DeBlois’s answer, visible in the film’s execution, is that the story works better in certain respects at live-action scale. One IMDB reviewer observed: “this remake plays even better on the big screen than the animation ever did due to the sheer size of the set pieces and the realistic dragon CGI.”
The Cast and Performances
Mason Thames, who gained recognition as the lead of The Black Phone in 2021, plays Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III in this dragon movie. He is the resourceful, underappreciated son of Chief Stoick the Vast. The Viking teenager defies centuries of tradition by befriending Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon, rather than hunting it. Thames brings the right combination of awkwardness and intelligence to the role. The performance grounds the film’s fantasy adventure film premise in something emotionally recognizable.
BAFTA nominee Nico Parker plays Astrid Hofferson — the fierce Viking warrior and Hiccup’s eventual love interest. Parker told The Movie Dweeb ahead of release that audiences could look forward to an impressive first flight scene. “Everything is being executed with incredible amounts of love and care,” she said. “I think it’s going to be incredibly exciting.” The scene delivered on that promise. The dragon flight sequences are among the film’s most praised elements — and central to the Berk adventure’s emotional impact.
Gerard Butler reprises his role as Stoick the Vast — a role he originally voiced in the animated franchise. His performance received particular praise. Butler dedicated the film to his mother, who passed before the film’s release. The dedication, visible in the credits, added a personal dimension to a performance already noted for its emotional depth.
The Cast
ScreenRant called it “fantastic” with “truly gorgeous visuals and wonderful performances.” As a box office family movie in the DreamWorks franchise, it set a standard for family movies 2026.
Nick Frost plays Gobber, the village blacksmith — a role that provides the film’s warmest comedic moments. Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Naomi Wirthner, and Harry Trevaldwyn fill out the Berk ensemble. John Powell returned to score the remake — the same composer whose music defined the original animated trilogy. That decision proved crucial. One IMDB reviewer noted: “Retaining John Powell’s powerful composition elevates this movie to a different level.” Bill Pope served as cinematographer.
The Franchise Context
This live-action film arrived into a specific cultural moment. The How to Train Your Dragon franchise had been dormant since 2019. The original 2010 DreamWorks animated film was itself based on Cressida Cowell’s novel series. It became a franchise that spanned three theatrical films, multiple short films, television series, and a spin-off. The animated trilogy concluded in 2019 with The Hidden World. This family blockbuster was, then, the franchise’s first major theatrical release in six years. Six years later, the live-action summer movie hit reignited the property for a new generation. Returning audiences encountered a world they already loved, remade with greater visual scale.
The Dual-Audience Logic
That dual-audience logic — new viewers and returning fans together — is precisely what makes the animated classic remake category commercially viable when executed with care. The box office contenders that fail in this category typically prioritize novelty over faithfulness, or faithfulness over craft. How to Train Your Dragon achieved the rarer thing: faithfulness delivered with genuine craft. The CGI Toothless, in particular, received consistent critical attention as an achievement in digital character creation that advances what live-action fantasy movies can accomplish.
Filming took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, beginning in January 2024 and wrapping in May. The production investment was $150 million. The production scale — $150 million across practical Viking village sets and extensive digital environments — gave the film the visual ambition its story required. Summer family films at this visual register tend to sustain longer theatrical runs than those operating at lower scale. Family audiences return. The family film trends data from 2025 supports this. The film maintained theatrical staying power across multiple weeks, drawing first-time viewers and repeat visitors alike. For more on the summer film stories and franchise releases of the past year, explore Runway’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning box office coverage.
Why This Story Still Resonates
The narrative at the center of the remake is not complicated. An outcast teenager forms a bond with a creature that his society regards as an enemy. It is a movie adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s beloved novel. The bond reveals a truth that challenges the society’s foundational assumptions. The outcast, ultimately, changes the world around him.
The Emotional Logic
That is a story structure that works across generations. It speaks to something universal — the experience of perceiving what others refuse to see, and bearing the cost of that perception.
For a live-action summer entertainment release in 2025 and now 2026, that emotional clarity is commercially productive. Family entertainment works best when the emotional stakes are both comprehensible and genuinely felt. IMDB reviewers gave the film a 7.7 rating. They described it as “one of the better live-action remakes” that achieves what “usually you don’t receive from a remake” — the capture of “its heart and soul.” Rotten Tomatoes described it as one that “may just be the best live-action adaptation yet.”
That kind of critical consensus transforms a single theatrical release into a movie franchise success story — and sustains it as one of the year’s most important cinema releases.
The Netflix debut in February 2026 ensures that the dragon film story will continue accumulating new audiences throughout 2026 and beyond.
Franchise Future
Future franchise expansion discussions, while not publicly confirmed, are commercially well-supported by the film’s performance. Screen Rant’s box office milestone report confirms the film crossed $560 million worldwide in July 2025 — “only the fifth movie of the year to reach that milestone.” As Netflix Tudum’s the picture streaming guide confirms, the film has been available to stream since February 2026, extending its reach to audiences who missed its theatrical run. For all the entertainment, film, and box office coverage that matters in 2026, trust Runway Magazine.
