However, plans for a two-year turnaround between How to Train Your Dragon movies proved too ambitious and the third Dragon installment – which, similar to How to Train Your Dragon 2, DeBlois is writing and directing solo while Sanders keeps busy working on DreamWorks’ The Croods franchise – was pushed back from 2016 to 2017.
How To Train Your Dragon 3 opens in U.S. theaters on May 18th, 2018.
Writers/directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders follows their work on the well-received 2002 Disney animated film Lilo & Stitch with How to Train Your Dragon, a computer-animated film loosely based on the Dragon book series by Cressida Cowell and released by DreamWorks Animation in 2010.
The current plan is for How to Train Your Dragon 3 to wrap up the story of young Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his dragon Toothless, with DeBlois having indicated the third Dragon film will conclude the pair’s story on a poignant note – one that also brings the How to Train Your Dragon movie franchise closer to the over-arching narrative trajectory of Cowell’s source novels, at the same time.