Storyboarding underway for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON sequel

Movie How to Train Your Dragon How to Train Your Dragon 2 about 12 years agoby

Storyboarding has stared for the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, and the film is scheduled to arrive in theaters on June 20,2014. Writer-director Dean DeBlois announced that the film is being planned as part of a trilogy.

Here is what DeBlois had to say:

“There are certain characters and situations that come into play in the second film that will becomes much more crucial to the story by the third. Other threads from the first will begin to pay themselves off in the second. It's my way of guaranteeing that it is not another adventure that we throw the same five or six characters into, that it feels like part of a larger story.”

While at the dedication for USC’s new Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Center for Animation, DeBlois revealed that several of the scripts have been completed and storyboarding had begun. He we said, “It is nice that we have an excited crew and a lot of confidence in the project. It is really ambitious. It's all fun stuff, it's really challenging."

The original film was co-directed by DeBlois and produced by Bonnie Arnold. Chris Sanders (co-director on the first film) is exec producing the sequel. We reported in February that DeBlois and Arnold had this to say about the project:

We are treating How To Train Your Dragon as the first act in a much larger story. As we head into this one, the world expands. Everything is much bigger with still the heartfelt qualities that made the first one resonate so much with audiences. There are no longer restrictions to this tiny island in the North Sea. They have the entire Northern hemisphere within their grasp.

The only way of tracing the story is to draw on elements that were in the first movie and set up elements for a third movie, so it doesn't feel like a random adventure with the same five or six characters. This truly is a second chapter in a larger story.

I loved the original film, but so did just about everyone. It was one of the 10 highest-grossing movies in the 2010 North American box office, grossing nearly $500 million worldwide. I am interested to see how epic this project gets. What are your thoughts?