While Gerard Butler has a busy year in 2025, the actor’s biggest hit is likely to be the live-action remake of 2010’s How To Train Your Dragon. 2010’s How To Train Your Dragon was a critical and commercial success that spawned two sequels after its 2010 release. Both 2014’s How To Train Your Dragon 2 and 2019’s How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World earned more than the original movie, making the series one of only a handful of franchises that didn’t peak with its first outing.

The How To Train Your Dragon movies all 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 ing 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 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 his recent crime sequel Den of Thieves 2: Pantera proves 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 the How To Train Your Dragon series. How To Train Your Dragon is 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 makes How 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 of How 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 . Most of How To Train Your Dragon’s live-action cast are 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 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 Dragon arrives only 15 years after the original animated movie of the same name.

Butler’s box office fortunes have been mixed in recent years, with Den of Thieves 2: Pantera earning only $55 million on a budget of $40 million. Although the post-apocalyptic action sequel Greenland: Migration will be a major 2025 release for the star, How To Train Your Dragon is 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: Migration is likely to outdo its 2020 predecessor Greenland, 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, but Greenland: Migration could reasonably be expected to comfortably eclipse this box office performance. That said, there is no doubt that How To Train Your Dragon will be Butler’s biggest 2025 release in of box office performance.

There is a lot riding on Gerard Butler’s return to the How To Train Your Dragon series.

Not only does the Greenland franchise have less brand recognition than the How To Train Your Dragon movies, 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. If How To Train Your Dragon succeeds, other live-action Dreamworks remakes might be on the horizon. As such, there is a lot riding on Gerard Butler’s return to the How To Train Your Dragon series in 2025.