'Micronauts' Movie Finds Director In 'How To Train Your Dragon's Dean DeBlois

Dean DeBlois is making the move from lovable animated dragons to tiny superheroes. The How to Train Your Dragon filmmaker has been tapped to be the Micronauts movie director, helming and writing the live-action sci-fi movie based on the popular 1970s kids' toys that spawned a Marvel comic.Deadline reports that DeBlois is directing and writing Paramount and Hasbro's live-action adaptation of Micronauts, based on the characters of the children's toy line which inspired the Marvel sci-fi comic.Micronauts will be DeBlois' first time directing a live-action feature film just after he's coming off the career-defining How to Train Your Dragon franchise, for which he helmed all three films. DeBlois has proven to have an eye for gorgeous, sweeping visuals, as well as a knack for heartfelt character drama. I'm not sure if either of those would apply to the Micronauts movie, which follows a team of tiny alien space explorers fighting an immortal dictator, but I'm sure it won't hurt.

Here is a description of Micronauts, per Deadline:

The Micronauts came from the small universe, Microverse, which was full of strange planets like the human-inhabited Homeworld which is made up of diverse spherical habitats that are linked together in the fashion of a molecular chain. A resistance assembles in response to the threat posed by immortal dictator Baron Karza who gains control of Homeworld through the creation of the Body Banks, where life-extending brain transplants are performed on the rich and inhuman genetic alterations on the poor.

Based on the children's toys from the 1970s and 1980s, Micronauts spawned not only that Marvel comic, but an animated series in the '80s...though it didn't quite reach the heights of popularity as other Hasbro properties of the time like G.I. Joe. But the film will be joining the planned Hasbro Cinematic Universe, which will ostensibly unite its heroes with characters from G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., and ROM. Micronauts has been in the works at Bad Robot for several years, with a screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Details on DeBlois' version is currently under wraps, but Deadline reports that it will "focus on intergalactic explorers."

In our interview with DeBlois earlier this year for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, he looked back on his journey with that franchise and teased his involvement with a live-action project: "It's the end of a decade and I'm really proud of it, but I'm also eager to get back to other projects that have been sitting on the back burner. And hopefully, do something live action at some point." Looks like that time has come.

Paramount has set Micronauts for a June 4, 2021 release.