It was all about How to Train Your Dragon 2, Peabody & Sherman, and Turbo at the Dreamworks Animation Filmmaker Focus panel today at San Diego Comic-Con. Chief creative officer Bill Damaschke and directors David Soren (Turbo), Rob Minkoff (Peabody & Sherman), and Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon 2) were on hand to talk the crazy world of cartooning.
The biggest news to come out of the panel was that Game of Thrones' Kit Harington has joined the voice cast of the How to Train Your Dragon sequel, and the actor surprised the fans in attendance when he popped in to talk about the gig. DeBlois described the character -- who's amusingly enough called Eret -- as a dragon-trapper who is "very brazen and cocky and has an interesting arc in the story." A character performance test was also shown featuring Eret, where he proclaims that he is "Eret, son of Eret, of many sons. I dare say I may be the finest!" This got a big laugh from the crowd.
Cate Blanchett and Gladiator's Djimon Hounsou were also announced today as joining the cast. Blanchett is Valka, "a feral vigilante type character" who has hidden away and saved many dragons. Hounsou voices the big bad, Drago Bludvist, "a maniacal strange from a strange land who has a vendetta against the dragons."
The film takes place about five years after the first one, with Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his faithful dragon Toothless still the best of friends. DeBlois said that the film starts where the last one left off in that the Vikings are now on the backs of the dragons with the entire world in front of them. But of course, there has to be a conflict, and a land is found where humans are at war with the dragons.
Interestingly, DeBlois said that Part 2 was inspired by The Empire Strikes Back of all films, a movie that was hugely influential for him. With a third film also in the works, he thinks it important to up the stakes, especially since he thinks a lot of sequels are pretty disappointing these days.
A couple of clips were played from the film, both of which featured plenty of flying, diving, soaring, and freefalling through the clouds for Hiccup and Toothless. Hiccup, it seems, has now built a suit that enables him to do a bit of gliding himself, if not flying, though it leads to comedic trouble in this clip as they crash-land as a result. But that's followed by some funny and nice frolicking between the two. (Is there any love more pure than that between a boy and his dragon?) The second clip was more menacing, with the pair encountering some kind of warrior mounted on his own dragon who forces our heroes to crash into the icy water below. Toothless is then overtaken by a sea creature of some sort while Hiccup's helmet floats to the surface as the clip ended. Cue the Comic-Con crowd all yelling "Noooooooo."
Peabody & Sherman director Minkoff, who kind of looks like Sherman actually, showed off a clip from his film too. The pair, who are of course based on the old cartoon series, find themselves in the era of the French Revolution, or thereabouts, via their "Way-Back Machine." With the super-smart dog Mr. Peabody facing the guillotine, he devises an elaborate escape that is explained to us onscreen with everything from drawings and diagrams to charts and nutrition fact sheets, only in a much more fun way than that sounds. From there we also got a duel between Peabody and the bad guy and a rocket-like escape, all achieved through the magic of science of course.
The footage shown -- which also included some stuff from Turbo, which just came out this week -- looked nice and fun, but the Dragon material in particular was breathtaking, as the characters spend most of their time in the sky. Oh, and DeBlois also said that he is in touch with the showrunners on the Dragon TV show so that they can avoid story conflicts, and that Season 3 of the show might set up the new film in some way.
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