The most difficult challenge in adapting Dreamworks’ beloved How to Train Your Dragon into live-action isn’t the amazing array of dragons. It’s finding the right actors to star as the series’ two main human characters, Hiccup and Astrid. Well, that challenge has been met as Universal has named Mason Thames and Nico Parker as the two Viking lovebirds.
Deadline confirms the news of Thames and Parker’s casting in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon. Neither is a household name, but they are both rising stars with impressive recent credits. Thames’ breakout role came opposite a villainous Ethan Hawke in The Black Phone, a small-budget thriller that earned a whopping $161M in 2021.
Parker, who happens to be the daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton (and a dead ringer for her momma) and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel director Ol Parker, impressed as Pedro Pascal’s doomed daughter Sarah in the debut episode of The Last of Us. She also appeared alongsid her mother in Reminiscence and had a lead part in Tim Burton’s Dumbo.
How to Train Your Dragon will be directed by Dean DeBlois, who helmed the animated trilogy to tremendous acclaim and over $1 billion worldwide. Thames will find himself as timid young Viking warrior, Hiccup, in a world where man and dragon live as enemies. But Hiccup’s world is turned upside down when he befriends a dragon he names Toothless. It’s an act that threatens everything he has ever known, made more difficult by the fact that Hiccup’s father is the king and greatest dragon slayer of all.
Universal plans to release How to Train Your Dragon into theaters on March 14th 2025.
