New How To Train Your Dragon Spinoff Series Announced By DreamWorks Animation

The How To Train Your Dragon franchise is one of the most beloved animated franchises till date – and it seems like the franchise is going to enter an all-new era. DreamWorks Animations announced on Wednesday that Dragons: The Nine Realms will debut on Hulu and Peacock this year. The series will be the third to draw inspiration from the original How To Train Your Dragon films following Dragons and Dragons: Rescue Riders – and is set in the present day. The announcement also included a teaser trailer and a new image, which can be seen below.

Dragons: The Nine Realms Will Be Set In Present Times

Dragons: The Nine Realms is set 1300 years after the events of How To Train Your Dragon, is set in a world where dragons are nothing more than legends to the modern world. A geological anomaly opens a deep fissure in the surface of Earth which causes scientists from across the world to gather at a new research facility to study this phenomenon. Soon after, a group of misfit kids is brought to the site, who uncovers the truth about dragons and where they’ve been hiding – a secret that they must keep to themselves to protect what they’ve discovered.

The cast of Dragons: The Nine Realms is led by Jeremy Shada, who has previously voiced Finn on Adventure Time and also appeared on Netflix’s Julie and the Phantoms. The series is showrun and executive produced by John Tellegen. Other executive producers on the show are Henry Gilroy and Chuck Asten, with Ben Steven working as supervising producer.

This news comes a few years after the debut of the last film in the series, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It was earlier revealed by director Dean DeBlois that the ideal way to continue the franchise will be to set the premises in a different era.

Director Dean DeBlois On The Final Film:

“We definitely wanted it to feel hopeful but also conclusive,” DeBlois said at the time. “And I think what we tried to do was deliver a satisfying ending that ultimately meant that Hiccup and Toothless would go their separate ways, but also reassure the audience it was for the best, that we see them thrive in their adulthood. For me it’s a satisfying end, and that was the intention, to really kind of bring it back to the disappearance of dragons and having them kind of fall away into legend, but we the audience kind of know they’re still around. And beyond that, I don’t own the franchise, so I think if Dreamworks wanted to open it up again at some point, I would hope that it a different timeline, different characters, with the Hiccup/Toothless story remained intact.”