‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Pre-Production Costs Soar Beyond $50 Million

Universal Pictures has revealed that it spent more than $50 million on its upcoming live action How to Train Your Dragon movie before filming even began.

Universal is betting big on the children’s movie as it is the first live action remake of one of its Dreamworks animated films. If How to Train Your Dragon is a success it could be the first of many remakes as Dreamworks’ roster also includes the wildly-successful Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and Madagascar movies. It has a powerful precedent as Disney’s remakes of its classic cartoons have given a magic touch to the studio’s bottom line as we have reported.

It makes sense for Universal to start with How to Train Your Dragon as its trilogy of animated features cumulatively grossed $1.7 billion and earned four Oscar nominations.

The live action version is due to be released in June next year and stars teenager Mason Thames who got widespread acclaim for playing the lead role in Scott Derrickson’s 2021 horror film The Black Phone. In How to Train Your Dragon he plays Hiccup, a young Viking who shuns the family tradition of killing dragons when he befriends a cute winged creature called Toothless which will be a digital character from effects specialists Framestore in the upcoming movie.

Hiccup’s hirsute father Stoick the Vast is voiced by Gerard Butler in the animated films and he reprises the role in the live action version. He is joined by Nick Frost as the blacksmith Gobber the Belch while Hiccup’s classmate and love interest Astrid is played by child star Nico Parker, daughter of Mission: Impossible actress Thandie Newton.

New images from the film shoot were revealed last week and showed how true it is to the original. An even more momentous disclosure around the same time revealed that this authenticity came at quite a cost.

Budgets of movies made in the United States are usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine the cost of them in their overall expenses and don’t itemize how much they spent on each one. Movies made in the United Kingdom are exceptions to this and How to Train Your Dragon is one of them. It was filmed on the craggy hills of Northern Ireland which double for the Vikings’ Scandinavian homeland of Berk.

Studios filming in the UK benefit from the government’s Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend there. To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the production costs need to relate to activities in the UK. In order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up separate production companies in the UK for each movie they make there.

The companies have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing for permits to film on location. The Universal Pictures subsidiary behind How to Train Your Dragon is called Toothless Productions in a nod to its computer generated star.

Like most studios, Universal does not discuss the costs of individual pictures and did not respond to an opportunity to comment. It does not need to as the UK production companies are obliged to file financial statements showing everything from the total costs and the level of reimbursement to the number of staff on the payroll.

The latest set of filings for Toothless Productions was lodged last week and shows that by December 31, 2023, a total of $53.5 million (£42.2 million) had been spent on making the movie. This covered the pre-production period as principal photography didn’t begin until January this year having been delayed from July 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The filings show that 119 employees worked on the production over the nine months to the end of last year and keeping locals in work is one of the reasons that the UK government gives studios such rich fiscal rewards. The financial statements show that the company banked a $10.6 million (£8.3 million) reimbursement bringing its net costs down to $42.9 million which is still a blockbuster sum. There is good reason for this.

Amongst the army of crew members, some of the busiest were the craftsmen who built full-size sets of iconic locations from the animated films including an arena where dragon fights take place. There were “a lot of practical sets, so it’s not like we’re standing in front of a blue screen. We’re there in these big buildings. They’ve built the arena. They’ve done their job properly,” said Julian Dennison who plays Hiccup’s friend Fishlegs Ingerman.

Butler added that his authentic Viking costume took its toll on him and quite probably the budget too. The cost of custom clothing came to light in a recent report which revealed that one of the costumes in this summer’s super hero flick Deadpool & Wolverine had a $100,000 price tag despite being on-screen for less than 10 seconds. Butler was in his threads for far longer than that.

“I had seven layers, thick layers, and a thick beard, and then I had a kind of bearskin or wolfskin over it. It was heavy as shit,” he told Collider. “When I had my sword and my shield and the helmet, which was heavy, and all those layers with the clasps that went around, it was 90 pounds, my costume. I was, in the middle of the coldest day, soaking wet from sweat inside because it was like a furnace in there.”

It goes to show that although How to Train Your Dragon is a kids’ film, it is anything but Mickey Mouse.