How to Train Your Dragon Moved
DreamWorks Animation Film Rescheduled for March 26, 2010
DreamWorks Animation's adaptation of Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon has been shifted to March 26, 2010.
DreamWorks Animation has rescheduled its CGI animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. Instead of being released on November 20, 2009, the flick will hit theatres on March 26, 2010.
"Slightly shifting our release schedule gives How to Train Your Dragon access to the maximum number of screens in a less crowded release window," said DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg in the press release. "We believe this provides each project with the best possible chance to succeed and is an overall positive for the Company and our shareholders."
(Translation: DreamWorks doesn't think How to Train Your Dragon can hack it in the crowded November release schedule)
This change means that DreamWorks has only one movie coming out in 2009, the sci-fi comedy Monsters vs. Aliens. This flick is also DreamWorks' first animated movie to be released in stereoscopic 3-D. Jeffrey Katzenberg, like Avatar director James Cameron, feels that the time for this process has finally come, and will release all subsequent CGI animated movies using the process.
This rescheduling also means that there will be 3 DreamWorks animated movies released in 2010. Other than How to Train Your Dragon, the studio will unleash Shrek Goes Fourth on May 21st, and the Ben Stiller-produced superhero spoof Master Mind on November 5th.
Movie Based on Bestselling Children's Book by Cressida Cowell
How to Train Your Dragon is the first book in the bestselling series by British author Cressida Cowell. The books follow the adventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, a teenage Viking who uses his brains to compensate for his lack of muscles. In order to pass his initiation, he must capture and train the biggest, deadliest dragon he can find. Unfortunately, he ends up with a small, ornery wyrm that has no teeth.
Peter Hastings (Creature Comforts, Animaniacs) is directing the flick.
Certainly adapting How to Train Your Dragon is a good fit for the franchise-hungry DreamWorks Animation. Ever since late 2006, the Glendale-based company has been seeking scripts that they can turn into franchise films, much like the highly popular Shrek series.
As president Lew Coleman said about DreamWorks' direction in late 2006, "What we're really doing here is looking for sequels."
Cowell has written 5 sequels to the 2003 bestseller, called How To Be A Pirate, How to Speak Dragonese, How to Train Your Viking, How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse , How to Twist a Dragons Tale and A Hero's Guide To Deadly Dragons. If How to Train Your Dragon hits the jackpot for the company, then DreamWorks will immediately put the other five stories into the pipeline.
The studio has two films coming this year: Kung Fu Panda, due June 6th, and Madagascar: The Crate Escape, starring the voices of Ben Stiller, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Chris Rock, on November 7th.
