June 4, 2025 • 29 mins
Seventeen years after launching one of animation’s most beloved franchises, Dean DeBlois returns to How to Train Your Dragon for a bold new chapter: a live-action adaptation that’s bigger, more immersive, and emotionally resonant. In this episode of Seen on the Screen, Jacqueline Coley sits down with the Oscar-nominated writer and director to discuss bringing the world of Hiccup and Toothless into live action.
Candid and full of gems, Dean reflects on a career that’s taken him from animation desks to directing large-scale practical effects—including the massive animatronic Toothless used in flight sequences. He explains how The Empire Strikes Back influenced How to Train Your Dragon 2, how Mulan helped shape Hiccup’s emotional arc, and what it was like casting a new generation of actors, including Mason Thames and Nico Parker.
Looking back on his journey—from early creative struggles to seeing the Isle of Berk turned into a theme park—Dean reflects on the risks he’s taken, the lessons he’s learned, and the power of storytelling that keeps evolving, no matter the medium. How to Train Your Dragon hits theaters and IMAX on June 13.
Candid and full of gems, Dean reflects on a career that’s taken him from animation desks to directing large-scale practical effects—including the massive animatronic Toothless used in flight sequences. He explains how The Empire Strikes Back influenced How to Train Your Dragon 2, how Mulan helped shape Hiccup’s emotional arc, and what it was like casting a new generation of actors, including Mason Thames and Nico Parker.
Looking back on his journey—from early creative struggles to seeing the Isle of Berk turned into a theme park—Dean reflects on the risks he’s taken, the lessons he’s learned, and the power of storytelling that keeps evolving, no matter the medium. How to Train Your Dragon hits theaters and IMAX on June 13.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It really was an embarrassing movie to work on.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh God, can you call my every week? I love
so much nobody ever tells the d Hello. I'm Jaqueline
Coley and welcome to a special episode of Seen on
the Screen, brought to you by Make It Universal and
Rotten Tomatoes, where we talk movies with some of the
people behind the scenes at NBC Universal. When entertainment works best,
(00:28):
sometimes it opens a window into a world we've never imagined.
Other times it shows us a mirror image of our
lives with a heightened sense of home. Today, we're going
to dig into the question what have you seen on
the screen that does that. My guest today is Dean Doublois,
the writer and director of DreamWorks and Universal Pictures New
Live Action How to Train Your Dragon. You'll hear a
(00:50):
story about a young singer on the precipice of stardom
at the Mulan Soundstage, which classic film sequel was an
inspiration for the second How to Train Your Dragon film
and the movie Magic that brought Toothless and Hiccup's first
ride to life in live action. Dean, Welcome to Scene
(01:13):
on the Screen. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Thank you I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm very excited because, first of all, this is probably
one of the most prepared moments I've been for an
interview like this, because I've watched all the How to
Train Your Dragon animations, I've seen now the live action,
and I've been to Burke and I think this is
crazy that this seventeen year journey where I get to
go do all this stuff now started with you and
(01:37):
a pen and a thought and a story. So talk
a little bit about your journey to How to Train
Your Dragon first, starting at the animation, but then how
you got to the live action.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The first animated movie kind of came out of nowhere.
Chris Sanders, who I had made Leelo and Stitch with,
was working at DreamWorks on a movie called The Crudes Yep,
And he was called over the weekend by the then
CEO of DreamWorks, Jeffrey Ktzberg, and said, I want you
to step off of the movie you're on and step
into How to Train Your Dragon because it's coming out
in fifteen months and we need to start over. We
(02:09):
need a new story. So previous versions had been very loyal,
very faithful to the book, but the book was proving
to be a little too small, and he wanted a
bigger audience and a bit more of a mature story.
So Chris called me and said, what are you doing
right now, because I've got a job for us to do.
We need to write and direct this thing and get
(02:29):
it into theaters within fifteen months. So it was, you know,
we jumped right into the deep end. But it was
pretty liberating because it's something that I considered to be
in my wheelhouse. I love stories of young protagonists in
over their heads in a world of a fantasy or
a supernatural and we had the great wish fulfillment of
being able to bond with an animal, especially a powerful,
(02:51):
amazing animal that can take flight. So there was a
lot in here to dig into.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, for folks that'll watch the podcast, we're not listening
to us. We have redecorated in How to Train Your
Dragon every which way, also including this brand new book,
This is the art and making of DreamWorks How to
Train Your Dragon.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
It's a mix of wonderful set photography and a mix
of artwork and some models and all of the great
disciplines that went into creating the world of Brooke. I've
only seen some early kind of early layouts of it,
but yeah, it's incredible. You got some full layouts and
then just a whole lot of behind the scenes. Oh well, yeah,
(03:31):
it's really incredible. A lot of beautiful work went.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I can't wait again because everything y'all make, every frame
does feel like a picture, and even in live action,
it's like it's all still there. Oh. I love it
so much. I think that when people think of how
to Train Your Dragon, one of the things that is
interesting is that sort of like the thrill of flight,
it is these magical creatures, but really, at the heart
(03:56):
of it, it's a story about fathers and sons. It's
a story about community. And as you were getting ready
to transfer this into a live action I imagine that
it was very important that you do the same things
you did when you were adapting the book, which is
keep the things that you need to keep there, but
find a way to be true to the story. How
did you approach that, like as somebody who are like, well,
(04:17):
I wrote it, I've lived it, I've been through all
these different chapters with it. But now I'm at the
helm of this new iteration and I kind of get
to decide what was your litmus test? How did you
go about it?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, the first conversations were in partnership with the studio.
They made it clear that that's the story they wanted,
not some sort of tail inspired by How To Train
Your Dragon, And that meant that we could really lean
into all of the things that live action promises. So
you can lean into the subtlety of actors, and you
can lean into the grounded reality of real sets in
(04:49):
a real world, and all of the immersiveness you could
get from the language of live action. But for me
in particular, I think there is a core relationship at
the center of this which about finding your own voice.
And with Mason Thames, he really managed to capture what
it's like to be an outsider and to feel that
you have to change who you are in order to
(05:10):
fit in, in order to be a success, because the
story is about marching to the beat of your own
drum and having the courage to endure mockery and endure
ridicule by following your heart and watching the world eventually
change around you. And I think that's what's so empowering
about it and what seems to travel, what really resonates
(05:31):
with the audience and you dress it up in fantasy
and you have dragons and everything else, it just gets
better and better.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, for folks that have not gotten a chance to
go to Epic and walk into Burke and really see
your story, not as it is in the feature, but actually,
like imagine as if you could go into the world
of How to Trade Your Dragon after the events of
the first movie. That's really what it feels like walking
in there. The very first thing you come across is
your words. It is the basically the opening of it,
(06:00):
where you explain what Burke is. What does it feel
like to know that there's this whole experiential experience now
based around what you created in these in these first
in these words, but then in these images, and now
in this live action.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It is surreal. I think. I know that the Isle
of Burke at Epic Universe is based on How to
Train Your Dragon to the animated movie. So everyone that
had a hand in making that movie can feel quite
validated in seeing it in three dimensions and walking there
and knowing that people get to experience and live in
that world in a really wonderful way. But it is
(06:36):
surreal to think that this thing that we we sort
of collectively made now exists in a completely different experiential form.
We used to joke that the margin of success for
an animated movie was if you've got an ice show,
and so on Mulan. When they announced that they were
going to do an ice show, we thought, oh victory.
But now, yeah, these days it's.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
You want a theme park.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's a theme park.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, the stakes are higher, maybe, like that's cute, but
I've got a ride. I've got three of them. Actually,
you're online a little bit, right. Have you seen the
reactions to Hiccup and Toothless, Because.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I've seen there is one that really warms my heart,
and it's Connor from Love on the Spectrum meeting Toothless
for the first time, and how important it was that
he got over his hurdle having face to face experiences.
So I love his retelling of that experience and I
think that's just wonderful.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, I'm curious what it was like before you even
walk on to set, figuring out how you would find
someone like Mason, deciding that you wanted to bring Gerard
Butler back and then also invite new folks like Nico.
How was the casting process, because these again are characters
that have been dancing around your head for better part
of two decades.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yes, I mean it was certainly daunting at first, when
you think where do we even start. But we had
a wonderful casting director in Lucy Bevin, and Lucy pulled
together just a wonderful array of talented actors, young and old.
And I had seen The Black Phone, so I was
aware of Mason, and I knew he was about the
(08:09):
right age, and I was really impressed with his acting chops,
so I had asked that he'd be added to the list.
And it meant that we were able to not only
have auditions with some of these young actors, many of
them you'd never heard of, and some of them had
smaller roles, but we could put them together and we
could really see what the dynamic was between them. And
(08:32):
from the start, just putting Nico together with Mason, there
were sparks flying. It came together in such a great way.
Nico Parker is an amazing young actor who is very versatile,
but she was the only Asterid that we had auditioned
who could deliver really harsh dialogue directed toward Hiccup without
(08:53):
making it seem mean spirited and cruel and I love
that about her. She just sort of exudes this high
school sports team captain vibe. She's holding everyone to a standard,
and she takes herself quite seriously. She resents a bit
of Hiccup's privilege because she's works so hard, and she
just becomes such a great character as a test case
(09:16):
for Hiccup to change from the traditional way of thinking
in the community of Burke to this more enlightened, dragon
friendly view of the world that Hiccup discovers, and.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Their chemistry is really amazing. I kind of have been
dying to ask you this question as somebody that is
now responsible for this huge undertaking as far as adapting
the live action, but also someone that has to be
obsessed with the little details. What did you find was
the most difficult part of the transition and what was
the most unexpected surprise.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I think the most difficult part of the transition is
you go in animation, you have plenty, almost too much
time to think about decisions because the process moves very slowly,
and so you can second guess yourself to death. In
live action, you prepare as much as you can, but
you find yourself on a set. You have a number
of shots to get done within a day and then
(10:13):
the set's gone. So you have to be in the moment,
really responsive, and you have to make decisions with conviction
because everyone's looking to you, you know, to call the
shots literally, but also to be satisfied with them at
the end of the day. And you have to know
(10:33):
that you're collecting everything you need for the editing process
to put together a movie that's going to be satisfying
and not lacking. On top of all of that, I
think the thing that surprised me the most was that
if you do your preparation and you arrive with you know,
a fairly dense list of shots, you get if you
can then put blinders on and let those three hundred
(10:56):
or so people disappear and just focus on the actors,
magical things can happen where just within their own blocking
and interplay and the silences and the nonverbal all of
that communication that's happening becomes something that brings truth and honesty,
and so it doesn't feel like you're staging a how
(11:18):
to Train your Dragon play with you know, Gerard Butler
looking like you stepped out of Renaissance Fair. Instead, you
have characters that fully embody who they are within the
story and it comes through with honesty, and that was
quite surprising. Is just giving the room for that play
to happen within a very structured, you know, very sort
of controlled period of time.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I don't want to say this because again, we just
built epic universe where we have the Isle of Burke there.
But you just made me think that I really would
like to see how to train your dragon Renaissance themed
fair like universal make it. I would go, I'm literally
going to the Renaissance fair like like literally. I was like, oh,
(12:02):
that would be amazing. Make us all vikings and it,
have it all be universal stuff. This is an idea,
This is an idea, this will be Listen the people
watching it, make it happen. Before we dive into some
of the things that you have seen on the screen,
one of the last things I want you to do
is preview something that folks have spied from the trailer
and I can't honestly wait for them to get to
(12:23):
see it on June thirteenth, And that is that moment
from the animation when Hiccup rides, that thrilling moment of flight,
that that whole sequence, if you could just preview that
for them because I've done it. They have it, but
you made it, and I just I can't wait for
folks to experience it.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Well, I think you're talking about test Drive Test Drive.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, it's set to John Powell's iconic music. And that's
one of a couple of scenes that gave us that
challenge of delivering everything the thrill, the wish fulfillment, the jeopardy,
and that satisfying arc of going from uh, you know,
be very tentative to very sort of confident and intuitive
by the end of it. All of that in live
(13:05):
action meant that we could also lean into live action cinematography.
So we were watching movies and kind of taking either
in flight or on motorcycles or you know, Mission impossible
type movies. We were trying to get as much of
that visceral, palpable, immersive experiential camera work into this as possible,
(13:25):
and we had the ability to really showcase the physical
island of Burke and the skies above it and the
coastlines surrounding it. So everything came together in that scene,
all of the location scouting through Iceland and the Faroe
Islands and Scotland, and then all of the innovation that
we did when it came to Mason riding Toothless, which
(13:48):
is more complicated than you think it is, because we
wanted Mason to feel like a jockey on a horse.
In other words, he's moving with the creature. And that
meant building a giant animatronic version of Toothless that sat
on top of these pistons, this big gimbal, so we
could get movement in every direction. And as the dragon
leans or banks, or rolls or pitches and dives, so
(14:10):
does Mason. He moves with the creature, and all of
these parts are independent. So the head is independent from
the neck, from the body, and so he's not just
sitting there. He's not just along for the ride. He
is co piloting. And you really get to feel that
sense of seeing it all rendered photo reel with Mason
and a photoreel Toothless, and that bond and that exhilarating
(14:32):
wish fulfillment of feeling what it is to fly.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I can't wait for folks to feel it. I got
to see it in like the best theater possible. I
think it was thrilling. All right, let's dive to some
of the things that you've seen on the screen. Little
reminder on our popcorn buckets. This first one is quotes.
I'm going to give you a quote from a film,
hopefully one that you remember, and you're going to tell
me if you remember which one. It is with Love
(15:00):
comes Lost Son. It's part of the deal. Sometimes it hurts,
but in the end it's all worth it. There's no
greater gift than love.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Ah. Yes, that's from How to Train Your Dragon three
Hidden the World.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Like you're like, I remember when this was written, I
remember every ounce of this, or actually, yeah, this is interesting.
We don't talk to writers that often.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I think it was one of it was a way
of keeping Gerard Butler and Stoic alive in the third
movie after he had passed. It was revisiting memories with
young Hiccup and those pivotal life lessons that he was
now living in the present. So Hiccup's wrestling with the
idea of holding on a toothless versus setting him free,
(15:47):
and that was one of those moments. It's just a
truth that we all have to deal with in our lives,
which is, you know, if you're going to love something
may come a day where you lose that thing you love,
but it's in the end all worth it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, I love it. Next quote, why you stuck up
half witted, scruffy looking Nerve Herder.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I don't have no idea.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
This is Carrie Fisher and The Empire Strike Oh my god,
it shock me too hot Soulo. And I really feel
like it was my line read that I did not
give you enough.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I should know that because How to Train Your Dragon
two is kind of it's our version of Empire strikes Back.
That movie was.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Big for me this year, is I guess the forty
fifth anniversary. Yeah, forty fifth anniversary. You've Empire Strike. Talk
a little bit about your history with it, because you
say it had a seminal effect on you. Obviously you
put it into the second film, but yeah, talk about
it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Star Wars and specifically the Empire Strikes Back ignited my
imagination as a kid because I was just the right age.
I'd seen Star Wars when I was seven. I saw
The Empire Strikes Back when I was ten. It's when
I was drawing and when I was writing my own
stories and acting things out with action figures in my backyard.
And I think that that is what drove me toward
(17:00):
a career in storytelling. Yeah, and dreaming up worlds and
designing characters. Everything about The Empire Strikes Back took something
that I loved and expanded it in every direction. So
it was it was broader, it was more dangerous. The
costumes were cooler, the vehicles were cooler, the world's got bigger.
And when tasked with coming up with ideas for a
(17:22):
sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, I said, what
if we do something that's an ode to the Empire
Strikes Back? In other words, everything gets bigger and more interesting,
and more exciting and more adventurous. But it's only the
second act of a three act coming of age, and
therefore there must be a third film. There must be
a conclusion to it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Ah, I dig that. Yeah, I already setting up your
next gig. I get it. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Like it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Next quote, I'm cold, I'm lost, and I'm hungry, and
the Beatle says, I'm ugly.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm scratching my head.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I don't know Thumbllina, Oh my God, which I have
not seen, but I do know about.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, So one of my promises to the crew at
the start of this film was. I recognize that I'm
a rookie. You're all very talented, you have long careers,
You've worked on great films. I'm sure you've worked on
some bad films. This will not be a bad film.
I can't promise it's going to be a box office success,
(18:24):
or that it will be a success in any other terms.
But I can tell you that you will be able
to take your loved ones to a screening of How
to Train Your Dragon at the end of the day,
and it will be worth all of the late nights
and the weekends and the delayed vacations, because I know
what it's like to work on a movie where you
sink your heart and soul into it, and at the
end of the day you're embarrassed to say that you
(18:44):
worked on it. Oh, Fumblina and all of the movies
I worked on with Don.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Bluth, girl, you know what, I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's okay. It really was an embarrassing movie to work on.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Oh God, can you everything I love so much? Nobody
ever tells the d But this is what I think
is interesting is so many people learn from good experiences
as much as they learn from bad ones. And I
think it says something that your first day on set
you were trying to be honest with them, be like,
I don't know how this is going to end, but
I know that I can create a really good movie,
do you know what I mean? Like, I think that's great.
(19:29):
Is there a movie? And I will just ask you this,
as an animator and someone that really loves animation, that
you wish you could have been a part of that
you weren't.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yes, absolutely, The Iron Giant. Yeah, yeah, I watched The
Iron Giant with such envy because it was to me
groundbreaking in how how fresh it was and how poignant
it was and simple. So I really I admire Brad
Bird as a storyteller and a director. But that film,
(19:58):
which was made for, you know, a pretty modest budget
and ultimately didn't wasn't really supported as it went out there.
So it's a cult favorite, but it didn't it wasn't
a huge hit for the studio, but I think for
fans of animation it stands as one of the one
of the most notable animated films to have come out
the last thirty years.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I would agree give it up for Vin Diesel too. Yes, excellent.
I love this. I love the stories. Honestly, it's really
great too because we're kind of taking a little stop
along your filmography with all the incredible things that you've done.
I feel animators especially, there's always fun stops. Let's go
to the next stop, next popcorn bucket. Okay, this one
(20:41):
is true or false. The nineteen ninety eight animated feature
Mulan was the second Disney animated feature to be primarily
produced at the Florida Animation Studio.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
True.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yes, false, It was the first.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
It was the first, oh, because they had done pieces
of So the context for that is they they in
Florida had done pieces of the Lion King, but Mulan
was considered to be the primary. Yeah, it was. It
was primary primarily animated.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
But you got the detail saw on that. Were you
down there in Florida?
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I did, Yeah, I moved to Florida for for the
finishing of Mulan. That movie took five years to make,
and so it had it had gone long because it
took a while for us to figure out the story.
But I moved to Florida with with the Burbank based
team to finish the film there and I stayed to
complete it as the head of story once Chris Sanders
(21:39):
moved on to develop his own original project to pitch,
which was Lean.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Strich Yes, which is getting its own line. I really
do feel, honestly though, the brands are strong, and honestly,
I think you're just following the genius of all these
incredible animators and storytellers. But I just have to ask you.
Were you around at any point when they recorded the
Milan songs.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I did go to the scoring stage while Jerry Goldsmith
was recording the score with all of the musicians, and
there was there was a small young woman in the
back corner in a leather jacket and blonde hair, and
she wasn't making eye contact with anyone, and I said.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Who's that?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And someone said her name is Christina Aguilera. She'll be
big one day. And she was there to record the
Reflection song.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I stayed staring at my Disney channel for hours, waiting
because they used to play the music videos in between
the movies, and you didn't know when it would pop up,
so you just had to wait. And I waited until
I could record that music video, and I wore that
VHS out and I'm telling my age, but I don't
care I love that song and I love Christina Aguilera,
and you were.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
There and I storyboarded that sequence.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, this is like, sorry, give them Melina, you're from Milan.
I think every awkward girl has a specific love affair.
Any tomgirl like tomboy girl like they love Mulan, So I'll.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Tell you a connection too. There's a lesson that we
learned on Mulan when we finally figured out the story
that this is a girl who wants to do right
by her family and by her society, but she's ill
equipped to ever succeed. As opposed to a girl who
runs off and impersonates a soldier to get away from
her life, those are the two ideas that have been balanced.
(23:31):
We chose the one where she loves her father so
much she's willing to risk shame and risk being vilified
by society in order to save his life. And from
that lesson we pulled this idea of a character that
is easy to root for as one who feels like
she's not good enough as she is. She needs to
change who she is in order to be accepted, and
(23:52):
goes on a journey where she comes to realize I
can just be who I am and let the world change.
That's hiccup in a nutshell. Yeah, I read that idea
forward in different forms.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I love that the Mulan Hiccough connection. Facts do the
crossover Disney, you know you want to kidding? True or false?
The production team created a total of ten Viking era tapestries,
some as large as three point five meters, which depicted
Burke's historical and mythical stories. True or false.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
True true?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But how many did they create?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I don't know exactly how many. Body can tell you
that it was more than ten. It was more than ten, okay,
false in.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
The number true on they made them love it, I'll
take it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
We wanted to explain why this particular tribe lived on
that island, okay, And we saw the opportunity in the
live action movie to suggest that Vikings had traveled far
and wide, and they encountered cultures from all over the
Far East, the Silk Road, North Africa, everywhere they went
and found that there were dragons that were problems in
every one of these. So the history of our tribe
(25:03):
is made up of all of these the best Viking fighters,
small of these different cultures coming together to defeat a
common enemy and setting up on that island because they
knew it was within spitting distance of a key dragon's nest.
So that's the history of our tribe, and that's why
it's such a mix of cultures in the tapestries, in
(25:23):
the artwork and the costumes and the weaponry.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's how they used to tell their stories right.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And record their history. Yeah, So if you actually took
a look at all of the tapestries that were created
for How to Train Your Dragon, you would see the
story of vikings intermingling with these different cultures and how
they came together and set up shop basically on the
island of burke I.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Love that sailors altogether fighting one common enemy. Dig it
all right? True or false? For the new live action
How to Train Your Dragon, full scale foam heads were
built for each dragon species false, yes, false, all of
them save the Red Death because that would be how
(26:06):
big the.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Size of a building. So we created our dragons digitally
as animatable creatures. But we sent those specs to a
company called Stitches and Glue, and they make from those
specs foam heads and bodies of the dragons that are
then puppeteered by this amazing team of puppeteers led by
(26:29):
Tom Wilton, so that when you have Mason or Nico
or Gerard in a scene with dragons, they are interacting
with an acting dragon.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
A real actor too, like somebody that's used to like, yeah,
it's a tennis.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Ball on a stick. You actually have somebody who's who's
creating the sense of the dragon. So not only can
you frame for the dragon and have something to cut
together when you're in the editing process, but the actor
has a scene player. Yeah, in the scene park. It's
really amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I can barely like keep like just the red light
on the care I'm like, how do y'all look at
that and pretend that's anything other than a red light
on a camera. But that's why they get paid to
do that. Lovely, I love all these details. Love it,
love it, love it well. You did great. Thank you
for all of the stories too, Like this is so
so much fun. And we've got to ask you some
rapid fire questions. What's your favorite movie snack?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
My favorite movie snack is popcorn.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Okay, just buy itself, nothing special.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I love popcorn with a little bit of butter.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Ironically, my least favorite movie snack in the hands of
anyone else is popcorn?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh yeah, because they're allowed.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I hate to listen to people mingling around for popcorn
and crunching. I'm with you, it's open.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, get them. I love this so much. I'm popcorn
as well, but I like kalapenos on it. I'm from
I'm a Texas girl. Like a little spice on my popcorn.
I'm strange.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Last show that you'veinged? Have you had time?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Ah? The last show that I binged I'm currently binging
is The Bear. I'm loving it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Is that what you do to relax? Because that's an
interesting show. It's like me though. I watched The Pit,
which other people will also say is a very tense show.
But I like it.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Favorite actor, Favorite actor, Kate Blanchett.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's a great one. Favorite Kate Blanchett role.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I loved Kate Blanchett and Veronica Karen.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I don't think I've seen that she plays a Dublin reporter.
Oh yes, this is the Wow a little while ago. Right, Okay,
dig I love tar Uh. Going to the movie theater alone?
Yeah r nay sounds like yay, you're like the entire
theater alone. I don't want anybody like I will rent
it out by myself. I dig that. And your favorite
classic Universal film?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Does ET count?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Definitely at counts?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, ET was pivotal for me, the house.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
That Amblin built in so many ways. Dean, this is great.
Thank you for being here. I can't wait for folks
to see How to Train Your Dagon in theaters and
Imax June thirteenth.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Thank you, thank you for having me, and I can't
wait for everyone to see it.
It really was an embarrassing movie to work on.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh God, can you call my every week? I love
so much nobody ever tells the d Hello. I'm Jaqueline
Coley and welcome to a special episode of Seen on
the Screen, brought to you by Make It Universal and
Rotten Tomatoes, where we talk movies with some of the
people behind the scenes at NBC Universal. When entertainment works best,
(00:28):
sometimes it opens a window into a world we've never imagined.
Other times it shows us a mirror image of our
lives with a heightened sense of home. Today, we're going
to dig into the question what have you seen on
the screen that does that. My guest today is Dean Doublois,
the writer and director of DreamWorks and Universal Pictures New
Live Action How to Train Your Dragon. You'll hear a
(00:50):
story about a young singer on the precipice of stardom
at the Mulan Soundstage, which classic film sequel was an
inspiration for the second How to Train Your Dragon film
and the movie Magic that brought Toothless and Hiccup's first
ride to life in live action. Dean, Welcome to Scene
(01:13):
on the Screen. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Thank you I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm very excited because, first of all, this is probably
one of the most prepared moments I've been for an
interview like this, because I've watched all the How to
Train Your Dragon animations, I've seen now the live action,
and I've been to Burke and I think this is
crazy that this seventeen year journey where I get to
go do all this stuff now started with you and
(01:37):
a pen and a thought and a story. So talk
a little bit about your journey to How to Train
Your Dragon first, starting at the animation, but then how
you got to the live action.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
The first animated movie kind of came out of nowhere.
Chris Sanders, who I had made Leelo and Stitch with,
was working at DreamWorks on a movie called The Crudes Yep,
And he was called over the weekend by the then
CEO of DreamWorks, Jeffrey Ktzberg, and said, I want you
to step off of the movie you're on and step
into How to Train Your Dragon because it's coming out
in fifteen months and we need to start over. We
(02:09):
need a new story. So previous versions had been very loyal,
very faithful to the book, but the book was proving
to be a little too small, and he wanted a
bigger audience and a bit more of a mature story.
So Chris called me and said, what are you doing
right now, because I've got a job for us to do.
We need to write and direct this thing and get
(02:29):
it into theaters within fifteen months. So it was, you know,
we jumped right into the deep end. But it was
pretty liberating because it's something that I considered to be
in my wheelhouse. I love stories of young protagonists in
over their heads in a world of a fantasy or
a supernatural and we had the great wish fulfillment of
being able to bond with an animal, especially a powerful,
(02:51):
amazing animal that can take flight. So there was a
lot in here to dig into.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, for folks that'll watch the podcast, we're not listening
to us. We have redecorated in How to Train Your
Dragon every which way, also including this brand new book,
This is the art and making of DreamWorks How to
Train Your Dragon.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
It's a mix of wonderful set photography and a mix
of artwork and some models and all of the great
disciplines that went into creating the world of Brooke. I've
only seen some early kind of early layouts of it,
but yeah, it's incredible. You got some full layouts and
then just a whole lot of behind the scenes. Oh well, yeah,
(03:31):
it's really incredible. A lot of beautiful work went.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I can't wait again because everything y'all make, every frame
does feel like a picture, and even in live action,
it's like it's all still there. Oh. I love it
so much. I think that when people think of how
to Train Your Dragon, one of the things that is
interesting is that sort of like the thrill of flight,
it is these magical creatures, but really, at the heart
(03:56):
of it, it's a story about fathers and sons. It's
a story about community. And as you were getting ready
to transfer this into a live action I imagine that
it was very important that you do the same things
you did when you were adapting the book, which is
keep the things that you need to keep there, but
find a way to be true to the story. How
did you approach that, like as somebody who are like, well,
(04:17):
I wrote it, I've lived it, I've been through all
these different chapters with it. But now I'm at the
helm of this new iteration and I kind of get
to decide what was your litmus test? How did you
go about it?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well, the first conversations were in partnership with the studio.
They made it clear that that's the story they wanted,
not some sort of tail inspired by How To Train
Your Dragon, And that meant that we could really lean
into all of the things that live action promises. So
you can lean into the subtlety of actors, and you
can lean into the grounded reality of real sets in
(04:49):
a real world, and all of the immersiveness you could
get from the language of live action. But for me
in particular, I think there is a core relationship at
the center of this which about finding your own voice.
And with Mason Thames, he really managed to capture what
it's like to be an outsider and to feel that
you have to change who you are in order to
(05:10):
fit in, in order to be a success, because the
story is about marching to the beat of your own
drum and having the courage to endure mockery and endure
ridicule by following your heart and watching the world eventually
change around you. And I think that's what's so empowering
about it and what seems to travel, what really resonates
(05:31):
with the audience and you dress it up in fantasy
and you have dragons and everything else, it just gets
better and better.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, for folks that have not gotten a chance to
go to Epic and walk into Burke and really see
your story, not as it is in the feature, but actually,
like imagine as if you could go into the world
of How to Trade Your Dragon after the events of
the first movie. That's really what it feels like walking
in there. The very first thing you come across is
your words. It is the basically the opening of it,
(06:00):
where you explain what Burke is. What does it feel
like to know that there's this whole experiential experience now
based around what you created in these in these first
in these words, but then in these images, and now
in this live action.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It is surreal. I think. I know that the Isle
of Burke at Epic Universe is based on How to
Train Your Dragon to the animated movie. So everyone that
had a hand in making that movie can feel quite
validated in seeing it in three dimensions and walking there
and knowing that people get to experience and live in
that world in a really wonderful way. But it is
(06:36):
surreal to think that this thing that we we sort
of collectively made now exists in a completely different experiential form.
We used to joke that the margin of success for
an animated movie was if you've got an ice show,
and so on Mulan. When they announced that they were
going to do an ice show, we thought, oh victory.
But now, yeah, these days it's.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
You want a theme park.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's a theme park.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, the stakes are higher, maybe, like that's cute, but
I've got a ride. I've got three of them. Actually,
you're online a little bit, right. Have you seen the
reactions to Hiccup and Toothless, Because.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I've seen there is one that really warms my heart,
and it's Connor from Love on the Spectrum meeting Toothless
for the first time, and how important it was that
he got over his hurdle having face to face experiences.
So I love his retelling of that experience and I
think that's just wonderful.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, I'm curious what it was like before you even
walk on to set, figuring out how you would find
someone like Mason, deciding that you wanted to bring Gerard
Butler back and then also invite new folks like Nico.
How was the casting process, because these again are characters
that have been dancing around your head for better part
of two decades.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yes, I mean it was certainly daunting at first, when
you think where do we even start. But we had
a wonderful casting director in Lucy Bevin, and Lucy pulled
together just a wonderful array of talented actors, young and old.
And I had seen The Black Phone, so I was
aware of Mason, and I knew he was about the
(08:09):
right age, and I was really impressed with his acting chops,
so I had asked that he'd be added to the list.
And it meant that we were able to not only
have auditions with some of these young actors, many of
them you'd never heard of, and some of them had
smaller roles, but we could put them together and we
could really see what the dynamic was between them. And
(08:32):
from the start, just putting Nico together with Mason, there
were sparks flying. It came together in such a great way.
Nico Parker is an amazing young actor who is very versatile,
but she was the only Asterid that we had auditioned
who could deliver really harsh dialogue directed toward Hiccup without
(08:53):
making it seem mean spirited and cruel and I love
that about her. She just sort of exudes this high
school sports team captain vibe. She's holding everyone to a standard,
and she takes herself quite seriously. She resents a bit
of Hiccup's privilege because she's works so hard, and she
just becomes such a great character as a test case
(09:16):
for Hiccup to change from the traditional way of thinking
in the community of Burke to this more enlightened, dragon
friendly view of the world that Hiccup discovers, and.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Their chemistry is really amazing. I kind of have been
dying to ask you this question as somebody that is
now responsible for this huge undertaking as far as adapting
the live action, but also someone that has to be
obsessed with the little details. What did you find was
the most difficult part of the transition and what was
the most unexpected surprise.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I think the most difficult part of the transition is
you go in animation, you have plenty, almost too much
time to think about decisions because the process moves very slowly,
and so you can second guess yourself to death. In
live action, you prepare as much as you can, but
you find yourself on a set. You have a number
of shots to get done within a day and then
(10:13):
the set's gone. So you have to be in the moment,
really responsive, and you have to make decisions with conviction
because everyone's looking to you, you know, to call the
shots literally, but also to be satisfied with them at
the end of the day. And you have to know
(10:33):
that you're collecting everything you need for the editing process
to put together a movie that's going to be satisfying
and not lacking. On top of all of that, I
think the thing that surprised me the most was that
if you do your preparation and you arrive with you know,
a fairly dense list of shots, you get if you
can then put blinders on and let those three hundred
(10:56):
or so people disappear and just focus on the actors,
magical things can happen where just within their own blocking
and interplay and the silences and the nonverbal all of
that communication that's happening becomes something that brings truth and honesty,
and so it doesn't feel like you're staging a how
(11:18):
to Train your Dragon play with you know, Gerard Butler
looking like you stepped out of Renaissance Fair. Instead, you
have characters that fully embody who they are within the
story and it comes through with honesty, and that was
quite surprising. Is just giving the room for that play
to happen within a very structured, you know, very sort
of controlled period of time.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I don't want to say this because again, we just
built epic universe where we have the Isle of Burke there.
But you just made me think that I really would
like to see how to train your dragon Renaissance themed
fair like universal make it. I would go, I'm literally
going to the Renaissance fair like like literally. I was like, oh,
(12:02):
that would be amazing. Make us all vikings and it,
have it all be universal stuff. This is an idea,
This is an idea, this will be Listen the people
watching it, make it happen. Before we dive into some
of the things that you have seen on the screen,
one of the last things I want you to do
is preview something that folks have spied from the trailer
and I can't honestly wait for them to get to
(12:23):
see it on June thirteenth, And that is that moment
from the animation when Hiccup rides, that thrilling moment of flight,
that that whole sequence, if you could just preview that
for them because I've done it. They have it, but
you made it, and I just I can't wait for
folks to experience it.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Well, I think you're talking about test Drive Test Drive.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, it's set to John Powell's iconic music. And that's
one of a couple of scenes that gave us that
challenge of delivering everything the thrill, the wish fulfillment, the jeopardy,
and that satisfying arc of going from uh, you know,
be very tentative to very sort of confident and intuitive
by the end of it. All of that in live
(13:05):
action meant that we could also lean into live action cinematography.
So we were watching movies and kind of taking either
in flight or on motorcycles or you know, Mission impossible
type movies. We were trying to get as much of
that visceral, palpable, immersive experiential camera work into this as possible,
(13:25):
and we had the ability to really showcase the physical
island of Burke and the skies above it and the
coastlines surrounding it. So everything came together in that scene,
all of the location scouting through Iceland and the Faroe
Islands and Scotland, and then all of the innovation that
we did when it came to Mason riding Toothless, which
(13:48):
is more complicated than you think it is, because we
wanted Mason to feel like a jockey on a horse.
In other words, he's moving with the creature. And that
meant building a giant animatronic version of Toothless that sat
on top of these pistons, this big gimbal, so we
could get movement in every direction. And as the dragon
leans or banks, or rolls or pitches and dives, so
(14:10):
does Mason. He moves with the creature, and all of
these parts are independent. So the head is independent from
the neck, from the body, and so he's not just
sitting there. He's not just along for the ride. He
is co piloting. And you really get to feel that
sense of seeing it all rendered photo reel with Mason
and a photoreel Toothless, and that bond and that exhilarating
(14:32):
wish fulfillment of feeling what it is to fly.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I can't wait for folks to feel it. I got
to see it in like the best theater possible. I
think it was thrilling. All right, let's dive to some
of the things that you've seen on the screen. Little
reminder on our popcorn buckets. This first one is quotes.
I'm going to give you a quote from a film,
hopefully one that you remember, and you're going to tell
me if you remember which one. It is with Love
(15:00):
comes Lost Son. It's part of the deal. Sometimes it hurts,
but in the end it's all worth it. There's no
greater gift than love.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Ah. Yes, that's from How to Train Your Dragon three
Hidden the World.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Like you're like, I remember when this was written, I
remember every ounce of this, or actually, yeah, this is interesting.
We don't talk to writers that often.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I think it was one of it was a way
of keeping Gerard Butler and Stoic alive in the third
movie after he had passed. It was revisiting memories with
young Hiccup and those pivotal life lessons that he was
now living in the present. So Hiccup's wrestling with the
idea of holding on a toothless versus setting him free,
(15:47):
and that was one of those moments. It's just a
truth that we all have to deal with in our lives,
which is, you know, if you're going to love something
may come a day where you lose that thing you love,
but it's in the end all worth it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, I love it. Next quote, why you stuck up
half witted, scruffy looking Nerve Herder.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I don't have no idea.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
This is Carrie Fisher and The Empire Strike Oh my god,
it shock me too hot Soulo. And I really feel
like it was my line read that I did not
give you enough.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I should know that because How to Train Your Dragon
two is kind of it's our version of Empire strikes Back.
That movie was.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Big for me this year, is I guess the forty
fifth anniversary. Yeah, forty fifth anniversary. You've Empire Strike. Talk
a little bit about your history with it, because you
say it had a seminal effect on you. Obviously you
put it into the second film, but yeah, talk about
it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Star Wars and specifically the Empire Strikes Back ignited my
imagination as a kid because I was just the right age.
I'd seen Star Wars when I was seven. I saw
The Empire Strikes Back when I was ten. It's when
I was drawing and when I was writing my own
stories and acting things out with action figures in my backyard.
And I think that that is what drove me toward
(17:00):
a career in storytelling. Yeah, and dreaming up worlds and
designing characters. Everything about The Empire Strikes Back took something
that I loved and expanded it in every direction. So
it was it was broader, it was more dangerous. The
costumes were cooler, the vehicles were cooler, the world's got bigger.
And when tasked with coming up with ideas for a
(17:22):
sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, I said, what
if we do something that's an ode to the Empire
Strikes Back? In other words, everything gets bigger and more interesting,
and more exciting and more adventurous. But it's only the
second act of a three act coming of age, and
therefore there must be a third film. There must be
a conclusion to it.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Ah, I dig that. Yeah, I already setting up your
next gig. I get it. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Like it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Next quote, I'm cold, I'm lost, and I'm hungry, and
the Beatle says, I'm ugly.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm scratching my head.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I don't know Thumbllina, Oh my God, which I have
not seen, but I do know about.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, So one of my promises to the crew at
the start of this film was. I recognize that I'm
a rookie. You're all very talented, you have long careers,
You've worked on great films. I'm sure you've worked on
some bad films. This will not be a bad film.
I can't promise it's going to be a box office success,
(18:24):
or that it will be a success in any other terms.
But I can tell you that you will be able
to take your loved ones to a screening of How
to Train Your Dragon at the end of the day,
and it will be worth all of the late nights
and the weekends and the delayed vacations, because I know
what it's like to work on a movie where you
sink your heart and soul into it, and at the
end of the day you're embarrassed to say that you
(18:44):
worked on it. Oh, Fumblina and all of the movies
I worked on with Don.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Bluth, girl, you know what, I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's okay. It really was an embarrassing movie to work on.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Oh God, can you everything I love so much? Nobody
ever tells the d But this is what I think
is interesting is so many people learn from good experiences
as much as they learn from bad ones. And I
think it says something that your first day on set
you were trying to be honest with them, be like,
I don't know how this is going to end, but
I know that I can create a really good movie,
do you know what I mean? Like, I think that's great.
(19:29):
Is there a movie? And I will just ask you this,
as an animator and someone that really loves animation, that
you wish you could have been a part of that
you weren't.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yes, absolutely, The Iron Giant. Yeah, yeah, I watched The
Iron Giant with such envy because it was to me
groundbreaking in how how fresh it was and how poignant
it was and simple. So I really I admire Brad
Bird as a storyteller and a director. But that film,
(19:58):
which was made for, you know, a pretty modest budget
and ultimately didn't wasn't really supported as it went out there.
So it's a cult favorite, but it didn't it wasn't
a huge hit for the studio, but I think for
fans of animation it stands as one of the one
of the most notable animated films to have come out
the last thirty years.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I would agree give it up for Vin Diesel too. Yes, excellent.
I love this. I love the stories. Honestly, it's really
great too because we're kind of taking a little stop
along your filmography with all the incredible things that you've done.
I feel animators especially, there's always fun stops. Let's go
to the next stop, next popcorn bucket. Okay, this one
(20:41):
is true or false. The nineteen ninety eight animated feature
Mulan was the second Disney animated feature to be primarily
produced at the Florida Animation Studio.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
True.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yes, false, It was the first.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
It was the first, oh, because they had done pieces
of So the context for that is they they in
Florida had done pieces of the Lion King, but Mulan
was considered to be the primary. Yeah, it was. It
was primary primarily animated.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
But you got the detail saw on that. Were you
down there in Florida?
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I did, Yeah, I moved to Florida for for the
finishing of Mulan. That movie took five years to make,
and so it had it had gone long because it
took a while for us to figure out the story.
But I moved to Florida with with the Burbank based
team to finish the film there and I stayed to
complete it as the head of story once Chris Sanders
(21:39):
moved on to develop his own original project to pitch,
which was Lean.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Strich Yes, which is getting its own line. I really
do feel, honestly though, the brands are strong, and honestly,
I think you're just following the genius of all these
incredible animators and storytellers. But I just have to ask you.
Were you around at any point when they recorded the
Milan songs.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I did go to the scoring stage while Jerry Goldsmith
was recording the score with all of the musicians, and
there was there was a small young woman in the
back corner in a leather jacket and blonde hair, and
she wasn't making eye contact with anyone, and I said.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Who's that?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And someone said her name is Christina Aguilera. She'll be
big one day. And she was there to record the
Reflection song.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I stayed staring at my Disney channel for hours, waiting
because they used to play the music videos in between
the movies, and you didn't know when it would pop up,
so you just had to wait. And I waited until
I could record that music video, and I wore that
VHS out and I'm telling my age, but I don't
care I love that song and I love Christina Aguilera,
and you were.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
There and I storyboarded that sequence.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, this is like, sorry, give them Melina, you're from Milan.
I think every awkward girl has a specific love affair.
Any tomgirl like tomboy girl like they love Mulan, So I'll.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Tell you a connection too. There's a lesson that we
learned on Mulan when we finally figured out the story
that this is a girl who wants to do right
by her family and by her society, but she's ill
equipped to ever succeed. As opposed to a girl who
runs off and impersonates a soldier to get away from
her life, those are the two ideas that have been balanced.
(23:31):
We chose the one where she loves her father so
much she's willing to risk shame and risk being vilified
by society in order to save his life. And from
that lesson we pulled this idea of a character that
is easy to root for as one who feels like
she's not good enough as she is. She needs to
change who she is in order to be accepted, and
(23:52):
goes on a journey where she comes to realize I
can just be who I am and let the world change.
That's hiccup in a nutshell. Yeah, I read that idea
forward in different forms.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I love that the Mulan Hiccough connection. Facts do the
crossover Disney, you know you want to kidding? True or false?
The production team created a total of ten Viking era tapestries,
some as large as three point five meters, which depicted
Burke's historical and mythical stories. True or false.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
True true?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But how many did they create?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I don't know exactly how many. Body can tell you
that it was more than ten. It was more than ten, okay,
false in.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
The number true on they made them love it, I'll
take it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
We wanted to explain why this particular tribe lived on
that island, okay, And we saw the opportunity in the
live action movie to suggest that Vikings had traveled far
and wide, and they encountered cultures from all over the
Far East, the Silk Road, North Africa, everywhere they went
and found that there were dragons that were problems in
every one of these. So the history of our tribe
(25:03):
is made up of all of these the best Viking fighters,
small of these different cultures coming together to defeat a
common enemy and setting up on that island because they
knew it was within spitting distance of a key dragon's nest.
So that's the history of our tribe, and that's why
it's such a mix of cultures in the tapestries, in
(25:23):
the artwork and the costumes and the weaponry.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's how they used to tell their stories right.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And record their history. Yeah, So if you actually took
a look at all of the tapestries that were created
for How to Train Your Dragon, you would see the
story of vikings intermingling with these different cultures and how
they came together and set up shop basically on the
island of burke I.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Love that sailors altogether fighting one common enemy. Dig it
all right? True or false? For the new live action
How to Train Your Dragon, full scale foam heads were
built for each dragon species false, yes, false, all of
them save the Red Death because that would be how
(26:06):
big the.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Size of a building. So we created our dragons digitally
as animatable creatures. But we sent those specs to a
company called Stitches and Glue, and they make from those
specs foam heads and bodies of the dragons that are
then puppeteered by this amazing team of puppeteers led by
(26:29):
Tom Wilton, so that when you have Mason or Nico
or Gerard in a scene with dragons, they are interacting
with an acting dragon.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
A real actor too, like somebody that's used to like, yeah,
it's a tennis.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Ball on a stick. You actually have somebody who's who's
creating the sense of the dragon. So not only can
you frame for the dragon and have something to cut
together when you're in the editing process, but the actor
has a scene player. Yeah, in the scene park. It's
really amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I can barely like keep like just the red light
on the care I'm like, how do y'all look at
that and pretend that's anything other than a red light
on a camera. But that's why they get paid to
do that. Lovely, I love all these details. Love it,
love it, love it well. You did great. Thank you
for all of the stories too, Like this is so
so much fun. And we've got to ask you some
rapid fire questions. What's your favorite movie snack?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
My favorite movie snack is popcorn.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Okay, just buy itself, nothing special.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I love popcorn with a little bit of butter.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Ironically, my least favorite movie snack in the hands of
anyone else is popcorn?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh yeah, because they're allowed.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I hate to listen to people mingling around for popcorn
and crunching. I'm with you, it's open.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, get them. I love this so much. I'm popcorn
as well, but I like kalapenos on it. I'm from
I'm a Texas girl. Like a little spice on my popcorn.
I'm strange.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Last show that you'veinged? Have you had time?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Ah? The last show that I binged I'm currently binging
is The Bear. I'm loving it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Is that what you do to relax? Because that's an
interesting show. It's like me though. I watched The Pit,
which other people will also say is a very tense show.
But I like it.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Favorite actor, Favorite actor, Kate Blanchett.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's a great one. Favorite Kate Blanchett role.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I loved Kate Blanchett and Veronica Karen.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I don't think I've seen that she plays a Dublin reporter.
Oh yes, this is the Wow a little while ago. Right, Okay,
dig I love tar Uh. Going to the movie theater alone?
Yeah r nay sounds like yay, you're like the entire
theater alone. I don't want anybody like I will rent
it out by myself. I dig that. And your favorite
classic Universal film?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Does ET count?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Definitely at counts?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, ET was pivotal for me, the house.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
That Amblin built in so many ways. Dean, this is great.
Thank you for being here. I can't wait for folks
to see How to Train Your Dagon in theaters and
Imax June thirteenth.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Thank you, thank you for having me, and I can't
wait for everyone to see it.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.