While Gerard Butler has a busy year in 2025, the actor’s biggest hit is likely to be the live-action remake of 2010’sHow To Train Your Dragon. 2010’sHow To Train Your Dragonwas a critical and commercial success that spawned two sequels after its 2010 release. Both 2014’sHow To Train Your Dragon 2and 2019’sHow To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden Worldearned more than the original movie, making the series one of only a handful of franchises that didn’t peak with its first outing.
TheHow To Train Your Dragonmoviesall enjoyed critical acclaim, and this was helped by their impressive voice cast. The original movie starred Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, and Kristen Wiig, but one of its most important supporting stars was Gerard Butler. As the hero’s father, Stoick the Vast, Butler played a Viking chief whose attempts to keep his village safe often clashed with his flawed parenting.
Gerard Butler Has At Least 3 More Movies Coming In 2025, But How To Train Your Dragon Is The Most Exciting
How To Train Your Dragon’s Live-Action Remake Is Butler’s Biggest Upcoming Role
Butler’s character could have been a tired cliché, but the star imbued Stoick with real humanity and ensured that, in a movie centered on dragon taming and hunting, the central father-son relationship was the most compelling story. That was no small feat, but Butler’s acclaimed turn in hisrecent crime sequelDen of Thieves 2: Panteraproves that the screen veteran is capable of pulling off a diverse range of trolls. Across his multi-decade career, Butler has starred in everything from historical dramas to rom-coms to violent action thrillers.
Butler’s performance as Stoick the Vast is a high point of the first two movies, which makes How To Train Your Dragon’s 2025 live-action remake an even bigger deal for the actor.
However,few of Butler’s other movies have equaled the box office success of theHow To Train Your Dragonseries.How To Train Your Dragonis a family-friendly franchise, which automatically improves its box office opportunities, but it is also particularly popular among critics and based on a beloved series of novels. That said, Butler himself is also responsible for a lot of this love. His performance as Stoick the Vast is a high point of the first two movies, which makesHow To Train Your Dragon’s 2025 live-action remake an even bigger deal for the actor.
How 2025’s How To Train Your Dragon Marks A Major Career Moment For Gerard Butler
Butler Has Never Reprised An Animated Role In Live-Action Before
Although almost every other major character was recast as the franchise made the leap to live-action,Butler will reprise his role as Stoick the Vast in the live-action remake ofHow To Train Your Dragon. This marks the first time that Butler will be playing the live-action version of the animated character he voiced, and he won’t have his usual co-stars Baruchel and Ferrera around for support. Most ofHow To Train Your Dragon’s live-action castare franchise newcomers, as the original stars of the series aged out of the adolescent roles they played in the movies.
Blockbuster stars like Nick Frost and Julian Dennison will join Butler, but he alone will represent the cast of the original movies in this new outing. This could be a lot of pressure for Butler, especially considering the comparatively brief gap between the remake’s release and the original movie’s arrival. Unlike Disney’s live-action remakes, which waited at least two decades after each movie’s original release,How To Train Your Dragonarrives only 15 years after the original animated movie of the same name.
Butler’s box office fortunes have been mixed in recent years, withDen of Thieves 2: Panteraearning only $55 million on a budget of $40 million. Although the post-apocalyptic action sequelGreenland: Migrationwill be a major 2025 release for the star,How To Train Your Dragonis even more important.
Will How To Train Your Dragon Be Gerard Butler’s Biggest 2025 Movie?
Butler’s Other 2025 Efforts Are Unlikely To Outdo The Dreamworks Remake’s Box Office
Greenland: Migrationis likely to outdo its 2020 predecessorGreenland, but this is only because that disaster movie had the misfortune of being released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Making over $50 million on a budget of $35 million was pretty impressive given the circumstances, butGreenland: Migrationcould reasonably be expected to comfortably eclipse this box office performance. That said, there is no doubt thatHow To Train Your Dragonwill be Butler’s biggest 2025 releasein terms of box office performance.
There is a lot riding on Gerard Butler’s return to theHow To Train Your Dragonseries.
Not only does theGreenlandfranchise have less brand recognition than theHow To Train Your Dragonmovies, but the remake is also the first time that Dreamworks has followed in the footsteps of its longtime competitor Disney by mounting a live-action remake of a beloved property. IfHow To Train Your Dragonsucceeds,other live-action Dreamworks remakesmight be on the horizon. As such, there is a lot riding on Gerard Butler’s return to theHow To Train Your Dragonseries in 2025.
