Michael Matthews (Love & Monsters) is newly aboard to direct the pic scripted by Brian Tucker and S. Craig Zahler. We first told you about the movie last Cannes. The story has slightly tweaked since then.

In Empire City, when a hostage crisis erupts inside New York’s landmark Clybourn Building, firefighter Rhett (Butler), his squad, and his NYPD wife Dani (Atwell) must fight and navigate their way through the building to rescue the captives.

The project reunites Butler and his G-BASE partner Alan Siegel with fellow Plane producer Marc Butan from MadRiver Pictures. Paul Currie will also produce. Leonine Studios co-financed development, and Leonine’s Quirin Berg and Alexander Janssen will executive-produce.

The Veterans represent international and CAA Media Finance is handling domestic rights. Sales will continue at next week’s American Film Market.

The film is financed under MadRiver’s multi-year equity financing and distribution deal with international distributors including DeAPlaneta (Spain), Eagle Pictures (Italy), IDC Distribution (Latin America), Leonine Studios (Germany and Austria), The Searchers (Benelux), Shochiku (Japan), SND (France) and Unicorn Media (Eastern Europe), who will each handle distribution in their respective territories. The pact’s first film Mutiny, starring Jason Statham, will be released by Lionsgate next year.

Butler recently starred in the Universal Pictures live-action adaptation of the animation franchise How to Train Your Dragon, reprising his role of Hiccup’s father Stoick. Butler is also coming off heist sequel Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which opened to No. 1 at the domestic box office at the top of the year.

Atwell recently starred opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 7 and 8. She is globally known for portraying Peggy Carter across the Marvel universe in such franchises as Captain America, Avengers, Doctor Strange, and Ant-Man, as well as in her own TV series Marvel’s Agent Carter.

Matthews directed the adventure film Love & Monsters for Paramount. He most recently directed the fantasy adventure series Nautilus for AMC+.

Butler is represented by CAA and Alan Siegel Entertainment; Atwell by CAA, Entertainment 360, and Hamilton Hodell; Matthews by CAA and Range; Tucker by Paradigm; Zahler by UTA and Range; Butan and MadRiver are represented by CAA.

The post Hayley Atwell Joins Gerard Butler In Hostage Crisis Action-Thriller ‘Empire City’ With Filming Due To Begin This Month — AFM first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

Law Abiding Citizen is steadily climbing the Netflix streaming charts. The movie sits at number 5 in the top 10 list, next to popular features like Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, animated KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix original The Perfect Neighbor, and Goosebumps 2. The movie follows an honorable family man, Clyde Shelton (Butler), whose wife and daughter are murdered in a home invasion. He hopes for justice, but a rising prosecutor named Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the killers in exchange for testimony.

Law Abiding Citizen is directed by F. Gary Gray, whose works include the likes of The Fate of the Furious and The Italian Job, from a script by the scribe Kurt Wimmer, whose credits include action films like The Beekeeper, Point Break, and Salt. The film was a modest success, earning $127.9 million at the box office against a budget of $53 million, although it got mixed reviews. It can be seen in the Rotten Tomatoes score of the movie, wherein critics awarded it 26% while the audience gave it a much higher score of 75%. No doubt the movie is proving a compelling rewatch on streaming.

The cast provides plenty of compelling performances: Foxx as Nick Rice, Bruce McGill as Jonas Cantrell, Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan, Leslie Bibb as Sarah Lowell, and Regina Hall as Kelly Rice. Further rounding out the cast are Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin, Christian Stolte, Annie Corley, and Richard Portnow.

Gerard Butler Will Be Back for ‘Den of Thieves 3’

Gerard Butler is coming hot off the success of How To Train Your Dragon. The actor brought his character Stoic from animated form to live-action and gave a stellar performance as the strict yet considerate father of Hiccup (Mason Thames). Butler has given us some memorable cinematic characters throughout his career, like 300, Den of Thieves, the Has Fallen franchise, and more. Now, one of his most underrated revenge thrillers is quietly destroying streaming competition.

Law Abiding Citizen is steadily climbing the Netflix streaming charts. The movie sits at number 5 in the top 10 list, next to popular features like Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, animated KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix original The Perfect Neighbor, and Goosebumps 2. The movie follows an honorable family man, Clyde Shelton (Butler), whose wife and daughter are murdered in a home invasion. He hopes for justice, but a rising prosecutor named Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the killers in exchange for testimony.

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Law Abiding Citizen is directed by F. Gary Gray, whose works include the likes of The Fate of the Furious and The Italian Job, from a script by the scribe Kurt Wimmer, whose credits include action films like The Beekeeper, Point Break, and Salt. The film was a modest success, earning $127.9 million at the box office against a budget of $53 million, although it got mixed reviews. It can be seen in the Rotten Tomatoes score of the movie, wherein critics awarded it 26% while the audience gave it a much higher score of 75%. No doubt the movie is proving a compelling rewatch on streaming.

The cast provides plenty of compelling performances: Foxx as Nick Rice, Bruce McGill as Jonas Cantrell, Colm Meaney as Detective Dunnigan, Leslie Bibb as Sarah Lowell, and Regina Hall as Kelly Rice. Further rounding out the cast are Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin, Christian Stolte, Annie Corley, and Richard Portnow.

Gerard Butler Will Be Back for ‘Den of Thieves 3’

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In the third installment in the Den of Thieves franchise, Butler will reprise his role of Big Nick. His co-star O’Shea Jackson Jr. previously teased that the movie might start filming in March next year. Writer/director Christian Gudegast previously told Collider, “Den 3 is all ready to go. It’s all outlined. I do notes, files, outlines, and when it’s time to do the script, it’s just basically changing the format, really. So it’s all outlined for the next two.”

Meanwhile, Law Abiding Citizen is streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more such updates.

The post Gerard Butler’s Underrated Revenge Thriller Quietly Destroys Streaming Competition first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

What do we know about the Blue Zeus documentary?
Blue Zeus is directed by Rocky Romano and Miranda Winters. The documentary movie stars former entertainment producer Clare Staples, who is now the founder of the nonprofit Skydog Ranch and Sanctuary. It will also feature an appearance from The Vampire Diaries star Arielle Kebbel, who’s also a wild horse advocate like Staples. It is executive-produced by Daryl Hannah and Matthew Rhys, with Jamie Baldanza serving as producer.

“The movie follows Staples as she fights to rescue the titular mustang and reunite him with his lost family, exposing the U.S. government’s deeply flawed and abusive wild horse management system. Through emotional storytelling and unprecedented insider access, the film delivers both powerful journalism and a visually stunning portrait of survival and advocacy,” reads the synopsis.”Featuring the heartfelt story of the rescue of a wild mustang, Blue Zeus shines light on the plight of America’s wild horses, exposing a flawed and corrupt government system rampant with animal abuse and paralyzing bureaucracy. Wild horse advocate Clare Staples attempts to rescue Blue Zeus after the US government captures him and his family. After 9 months, Clare is finally able to rescue him, but then she must beat all odds to find his family, who are lost in an overcrowded system. With unparalleled access to government employees, their helicopter contractors, and a whistle-blower, the film delivers jaw-dropping journalism through an emotional and visually stunning story.”

Before its West Coast premiere, the documentary has already garnered several awards from different film festivals, including: Best Documentary Feature at the Boston Film Festival; Best Feature Ensemble & Best Feature Documentary at the Jersey Shore Film Festival; Best Feature Documentary at the Pikes Peak Docufest; 2025 Best of Festival, Best Documentary Feature, Best Cinematography, Best Narration, and Best Music at the EQUUS International Film Festival.

The post Gerard Butler-Narrated Wild Horse Movie Blue Zeus Gets Trailer | Exclusive first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

The Garrity family faces an apocalyptic road trip where they dodge more meteors, a radiation storm and giant tidal wave, among other fresh dangers, in the trailer for Greenland 2: Migration, the sequel to the 2020 Greenland disaster pic.

Five years after an initial comet strike decimated much of the earth, Gerard Butler as John Garrity and seemingly still in a midlife crisis, Morena Baccarin as his estranged wife Allison Garrity and their son, played by Roman Griffin Davis, face another near-extinction event when an interstellar comet shower hits the earth’s atmosphere.

After struggling with life inside a Greenland bunker, the anxious Garrity family decides to leave that safety and navigate a shattered and radioactive wasteland of Europe to find a new home.

“I’ll take care of you both, until my last breath,” Butler’s character tells his family at one point as the end of the world threatens, and John Garrity is compelled to do all he can to save his family.

Greenland: Migration also stars Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag and William Abadie and Ric Roman Waughs directs the thriller from a script by Chris Sparling and Mitchell LaFortune.

Anton, Basil Iwanyk’s Thunder Road Pictures (John Wick) and Butler and Alan Siegel’s G-BASE are producing the disaster flick, with Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Butler, Alan Siegel, Sebastien Raybaud, John Zois, Brendon Boyea and director Waugh producing.

The original Greenland opened in the top box office spot in 29 international markets, taking in $53.5 million theatrically overseas, which marked one of the strongest performances for a title released globally during the pandemic.

The post Gerard Butler Dodges More Earth-Killing Meteors in ‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Trailer first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

Any film festival worth its salt will program a movie or two that’s more rooted in delirium than common sense. If you had to choose the wildest, loopiest big swing of a movie to play at the Venice Film Festival this year, it would likely come down to two choices: “The Testament of Ann Lee,” Mona Fastvold’s 18th-century cult Shaker musical (imagine “The Crucible” set in a “Handmaid’s Tale” world where the women are their own puritan oppressors), and “In the Hand of Dante,” Julian Schnabel’s impossible-to-pigeonhole literary gangster mystery, which might be described as “The Da Vinci Code” retold as a violent underworld fairy tale with 14th-century footnotes. But “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a forbiddingly austere slow-motion ramble. “In the Hand of Dante,” by contrast, is a folly that pulsates with life. Even when it doesn’t add up, it’s the kind of high-flying ride it’s hard to shake off.

Schnabel has always been drawn to extreme figures, usually artists, who convert what they’re creating into a matter of life and death. (His last film, in 2018, was the fever-dream Vincent van Gogh drama “At Eternity’s Gate.”) With “In the Hand of Dante,” Schnabel adapts a 2002 novel by Nick Tosches, the late counterculture writer who was mostly celebrated for his nonfiction (biographies of Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, and Sonny Liston; books on the drug culture and country music and rock ‘n’ roll). The decision to adapt that book is almost a red flag, since the novel itself was a grand mess. For a good while, though, Schnabel streamlines it into an entertainingly low-down saga of the place where violent crime meets poetic passion.

Oscar Isaac, with louche long hair and a snaky hostility, plays Nick Toches (or, rather, the fictional version of him from the novel), a journalist who’s a hipster-outlaw legend. We meet him as he’s seated in a bar, waxing eloquent about his obsession with Dante’s “Divine Comedy” — but also about how as a writer, he’d rather be tortured than subjected to the editing process. You can already see the anti-social undercurrents, mixed with the fervor for purity, that make a Schnabel hero. A flashback to Nick’s youth in New Jersey shows him as a kid literally murdering a bully with the bully’s knife. Then he goes home and confesses the crime to his uncle (played by Al Pacino as a gravel-voiced gangster mensch), who tells him that he did nothing wrong, and that he doesn’t need to confess, since God is everywhere and can already hear him. The audience should hold onto that thought, because it becomes part of the movie’s deep-think mix.

We’re then introduced to Louie, a thug who works for a loan shark, threatening and killing people. He’s played, in blond hair, with a voice of stone-hard vulgarity so thick and intense it’s almost musical, by a nearly unrecognizable Gerard Butler. And from the moment he appears, walking into a bar to torment the owner’s son, which is really just a way of toying with him before he does what has to be done, Butler is mesmerizing. He finds the true note in this killer’s sociopathic blunt-wittedness. Louie is summoned to the apartment of Joe Black, a higher-up gangster played by John Malkovich with a manner so quizzical yet threatening that his voice just about quivers with unexpressed rage.

Joe is a bit of an art aficionado, with a Rembrandt self-portrait on the wall behind him (Louie calls it “ugly”), and he has summoned Louie to tell him about an unimaginably big score. He wants him to go to Italy and steal the most priceless literary treasure that has ever been found — the original parchment manuscript of “The Divine Comedy,” written in Dante’s hand. It was discovered in the basement of the Vatican, and if they can sneak it out and sell it, it will be worth millions. We’re already picking up on the fact that, money aside, the discovery isn’t going to mean much to these two. But it will to Nick. The fellow he was talking to in the bar was one of Joe’s associates, and Joe wants to hire Nick to be part of the heist — and, more important, to lead the process of authenticating the manuscript.

The first half of “In the Hand of Dante” (the films runs 151 minutes), shot in satiny black-and-white, is skewed and violent and gripping enough to make you wish Julian Schnabel would simply make a neorealist gangster movie; he’d be great at it. Butler and Malkovich turn bullying into hambone art, and Isaac magnetizes our sympathy as the daredevil but still relatively civilized Nick, who’s caught in the middle of all this. The scene where Nick and Louie go to a palatial home in Palermo to filch the manuscript has a dizzying suspense (you haven’t experienced the killing of innocent civilians as a no-mercy afterthought until you’ve seen Gerard Butler do it). And once they return, the authentication process — Nick impersonating a historian so he can sit in old Italian libraries and steal papers that date from Dante’s time; the carbon dating and other precision methods — turns “In the Hand of Dante,” for a while, into a fascinating detective story.

But only for a while. Schnabel has already introduced his most florid gambit: flashbacks to Dante Alighieri, who is played by Isaac with a morose Shakespearean flourish. We see Dante’s immersion in local politics and his first glimpse, as a youth, of Beatrice, the 13-year-old girl he would fall in love with, never once speak to, and write the entire “Divine Comedy” in homage to. The flashbacks to Dante’s time don’t exactly heighten the drama, and they don’t pretend to. At heart, they’re ruminations on the meaning of love and God. Yet we go with them (sort of), for a while, notably when Martin Scorsese shows up under a huge white beard as Isaiah, Dante’s wizened mentor, who in a voice of religious delicacy cues Dante to the inner meaning of life.

Dante’s problem is that he married Gemma (Gal Gadot), but was in such spiritual thrall to Beatrice that he remained outside his own marriage and his own life. He’s got to learn the mistake of that, which he does when Isaac’s Nick, who is also on some level the reincarnation of Dante (get it?), replays Dante’s marriage by falling into a relationship with Guilietta (also played by Gadot), his new Italian work assistant, who has returned to Italy to help him with the manuscript research — but really to be with him. Are we having a narrative OD yet?

Beneath the lofty chatter and mirror-image plot mechanics, “In the Hand of Dante” is a wake-up-and-embrace-the-world-around-you movie. That’s fine, but you can feel something go out of the film — like, the ground floor of it — when Louie and Joe disappear. We’re now left with Nick’s research, his overly ethereally abstract love life, and the tale of an Italian scholar (Sabrina Impacciatore) who reveres Dante and happens to have a gangster boyfriend (played by Jason Momoa!) who will come after Nick and pull out his fingernails. Just wait till you see what happens when these characters start firing guns at each other, or when they meet Mephistopheles (Benjamin Clemtine), who’s a towering chanteuse…

“In the Hand of Dante” wants to transcend the narcotic of mere storytelling. It wants you to get high on love and agony and redemption and, yes, God, who the film says is all around us and can indeed see everything, so the secret of life is embracing the God who’s there in every moment. But that’s too much life philosophy to be not fully baked into a movie’s story. And Julian Schnabel — the one who made “Before Night Falls,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and “At Eternity’s Gate” — is too gifted a filmmaker to pass off this top-heavy layer cake as a fully realized experience for audiences. That said, there are far less invigorating ways to watch a good movie go off the rails than to put yourself in the hand of Schnabel.

The post ‘In the Hand of Dante’ Review: Julian Schnabel’s Gonzo Literary Gangster Movie Is a Folly That Pulsates With Life first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

I love me a good Gerard Butler movie. Hell, I even love a bad Gerard Butler movie. I’ve always had a soft spot for the actor, and it seems like I’m not alone, as a lot of people with a Netflix subscription are in the same boat. I recently noticed that everything, from Butler’s 2025 movie, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, to forgotten epics like Gods of Egypt were taking up prime real estate in the Netflix Top 10 each week.

That got me thinking… Netflix should do something they should have done a long time ago by signing Butler to some kind of contract to make original movies for them. There’s obviously a market for his style of action flicks (and even dramas), and I’m totally down for more. Like right now!

Gerard Butler Movies Have Been In The Netflix Top 10 In Eight Weeks (And Counting) In 2025

Don’t judge, but I’ve gone back and pulled some stats about Butler taking over Netflix’s Top 10 rankings (at least in the United States) through the first week of August 2025, and it’s kind of ridiculous. Through the week ending on August 10, there have been eight weeks where at least one of his movies was trending on Netflix and three weeks where he had two of the most popular movies on the platform.

Earlier in the summer, Plane was killing it on Netflix, which hopefully means the sequel happens sooner rather than later. One of the best 2023 action flicks, this fun thriller was in the top half of the ranking, but it was second to Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which held down a spot for four consecutive weeks earlier in the year. Remember Geostorm, Butler’s 2017 disaster film, where he played brothers alongside Jim Sturgess? Folks on Netflix loved that one, too!

There’s Obviously A Market For Butler’s Movies On Netflix, So Make Him Your Studio Star

As far as I can tell, the actor hasn’t made a Netflix original movie, and that’s something that should change. There have been multiple Anthony Mackie films, Chris Hemsworth has made a pair of action thrillers for the streamer, and Millie Bobby Brown is the platform’s premier star, and there’s no reason to think Butler wouldn’t push the subscriber count up if he were attached to one of the upcoming Netflix movies.

I haven’t dug too much into other actors’ dominance on the Netflix Top 10, but with Butler holding it down for eight weeks in 2025 so far, there’s obviously a huge following for the action star. Honestly, it kind of makes me feel better about myself in a way.

I Mean, Butler Can Handle Action, Drama, Comedy, And Different Accents

I’m not saying Butler is on the level of Daniel Day-Lewis or something like that, but this guy can pull off just about every genre. From massive fantasy epics like the popular How to Train Your Dragon live-action remake to the hyper-stylized 300 to the intense Law Abiding Citizen to the charming rom-com P.S. I Love You, he’s done it all throughout his career.

What I’m trying to say is that Butler is capable of handling everything that’s thrown at him, but I wouldn’t be mad if Netflix just gave him a stack of cash to make more action thrillers, because I need more.

Regardless of what happens, I can at least get excited for all those upcoming Gerard Butler movies (that’ll probably end up on Netflix at some point), like the long-awaited Greenland 2, the development of which I’ve been following for way too long.

The post Hey, Netflix, With All These Gerard Butler Movies In The Top 10, You Know What You Need To Do first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

Yes, I’m talking about another hit movie of his on Netflix. The 55-year-old actor is certainly no stranger to success, as just two months after seeing his 2023 action movie Plane climb to the third spot on the platform, he has yet another hit film sitting pretty in the top ten. The latest? 2023’s Kandahar, which currently holds the number two spot, well over two years after its initial release. In it, Butler takes on the role of Tom Harris, a covert CIA operative on a mission in Afghanistan who must leave once his identity is compromised. What’s more, he’s also tasked with fighting enemies as he tries to reach an extraction point in Kandahar.

At the time of its release in May 2023, Kandahar grossed $4.8 million in the United States and Canada and $4.6 million worldwide, receiving mixed reviews from critics at the time. While the general perception was mostly negative, recent reviews indicate a general appreciation of the film, holding an 86 percent on Popcornmeter. “I always enjoy a good Gerard Butler movie (especially when he uses his Scottish accent instead of a generic American one) and was pleasantly surprised with how much this movie got me in the feels. They managed to show the human side of all the main characters, not just mindless violence against ‘bad guys,’” writes one Rotten Tomatoes audience member.

“This movie was fantastic. I felt it had a perfect balance of action and emotion. The acting was brilliant from all. The action scenes were well done and not too over the top,” adds another. I have to admit, I’ve been sleeping on Kandahar, so I’ll definitely be giving it a watch this weekend.

The post Gerard Butler’s New Action Thriller Soars to #2 on Netflix—Here’s Why Everyone’s Watching first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

“When I was voicing the original movies, I didn’t imagine making a live-action version, but I was wondering what it must be like to be in this world and be Stoick,” the Scottish actor confirms as we chat in the SLS Beverly Hills hotel. “It never crossed my mind once in all those 15 years of a live-action film. Nobody ever mentioned it to me, and I never thought about it, so it came out of the blue.”

“Part of me was like, ‘That could be awesome,’ and another part of me was like, ‘Well, hold on.’ On the first day of visiting Belfast, where we filmed the movie, I saw a lot of the artwork on Toothless and the other dragons, as well as some of the digital effects, and then toured the sets. I was thrilled that I had the opportunity to be a part of it.”

Just like the original film that kicked off a franchise, How to Train Your Dragon takes place on the Viking isle of Berk, where an ancient threat endangers both the human occupants and dragons alike. However, an unlikely friendship between Hiccup, the son of Butler’s Viking leader, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, proves to be the key to both species creating a new future together. How to Train Your Dragon is now showing exclusively in theaters.

However, as writer-director Dean DeBlois revealed, Butler almost didn’t return to the role he made his own due to scheduling conflicts. However, serendipitously, luck was on his side.

“It was good luck for them,” he laughs. “No, it was a stroke of luck. I was in the middle of making another movie; we had just had a meeting and said, ‘Okay, I think we have to push this and do some more work on the script.’ I got a text from Dean two hours later saying, ‘We tried you again. You’re not available. I just want you to know I wanted you to do this so much, and I’m heartbroken.’ I said, ‘Wait. When is this?’ So, the other movie was pushed back, and I could fit this in the middle. It was destiny that the timing worked out, and everything unfolded as it did. I can’t imagine me not having done Stoick.”

“It reminds me of a line in the movie with the Trial of Flame, when Hiccup takes the knife, and I say, ‘I would have taken the hammer.’ I think that’s what I would have been like watching another actor in the role.”

In addition to reuniting Butler and DeBlois, How to Train Your Dragon also reunites the actor with his Chasing Mavericks cinematographer, Bill Pope. Being in the hands of people he trusts and has a rapport with made him feel safe.

“Bill is amazing. We were working with Curtis Hanson, and he was ill at the time, so he had to leave the movie. Therefore, at times, it was Bill and I directing the movie, so I got to know Bill a lot better than your normal cinematographer,” he recalls. “Also, especially with Dean, being able to go and play and know I’m backed up by an incredible visionary who’s so specific is great. When he would talk to you, it was amazing to listen to. I felt so relaxed. What I feel I brought to Stoik was the understanding that, despite everything I knew about him, I could almost forget it once I put on his costume and entered a whole new world where I could play in the sandbox. Therefore, I could be a lot freer and give the character a lot more levels and colors.”

Gerard Butler Suffered For His Art A Little In ‘How To Train Your Dragon’
While the experience of making How to Train Your Dragon was a pleasure, Stoik’s Viking costume was less of a walk in the park. It is impressive to look at, but it wasn’t fun to wear.

“The costume was 90 pounds, and you felt every pound of that being put on because it was seven layers,” Butler explains. “Things had to be wrapped, clipped, and pulled, and the first time I put it on, it took three hours. Once it was on, it wouldn’t come off, so that helped me climb into Stoik. I watched the movie the other night, and I’ve never had this before, but I went. ‘That’s me.’ It was such a metamorphosis. The costume was incredible, with its beard, makeup, and even what I was able to do because of it; I felt like I had truly transformed. The world-building that was there was immense.”

“On set, there was a different challenge for me than for everybody else. It was Belfast, and it was winter, so everybody was freezing. I was boiling. I don’t think I was cold once throughout the whole movie, and I was soaking wet the whole time because I had so many layers on. It was often raining, so the ground was also extremely muddy. In the movie, you don’t see that; it’s always fresh grass and lush forests; however, when you were walking the set, the mud was sometimes six or eight inches deep. It was pretty messy.”

Going around the world to promote the movie has brought Butler, also known for other popular franchise kick-starters such as Olympus has Fallen, Den of Thieves, and Greenland, face-to-face again with fans who have formed deep connections with the world of Berk. The film’s status was something he hadn’t quite realized previously.

“I knew people enjoyed the original, and it resonated, but I think I’m hearing it more now,” he muses. “We went to CinemaCon in Las Vegas, and when Universal showed their slate of what was upcoming, but it also went right back, and you saw things like Back to the Future and Jaws, we kind of thought, ‘Oh, my God, that’s us now.’ In 20 years, I think they’ll be showing How to Train Your Dragon up there. It feels like we made our E.T.”

Speaking of E.T., How to Train Your Dragon also has the honor of being immortalized at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. The Isle of Berk is one of the worlds at the groundbreaking new theme park, Epic Universe and Butler attended the opening event with DeBlois and some of the new film’s cast.

“The park is amazing,” he enthuses. “I think they did a fantastic job, and it was very surreal to go, ‘We made this movie, and now it’s a theme park. It felt a lot hotter than it would in Berk because it was boiling, but it also felt good to walk in my shorts and not have to dress in that six-foot-wide costume. It’s incredible. The imagination and the artistry are super fun. I think kids are going to love it.”

Encouraging fans to see How to Train Your Dragon in theaters, Butler believes that’s the only way to truly appreciate the fantastical flight of fancy. For some, it’s where they’ll fall in love with cinema, reminding the actor of an experience he had as a child that changed everything.

“The adventure movie that I saw and would have loved to have starred in was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Some movies move you, and others feel like they impact your life, and I felt that movie did that,” the actor reveals. “By the way, it’s why I’m here doing what I do, and it’s especially why I do movies like this because, for me, the idea of stepping into a fantastical story that would grab me in such a powerful way and partly feeling like I was living or performing in it is incredible. That’s why, when you make a movie like this, even though it’s fantastical, you do your best to ground it and make it as believable as possible. I love that about fantasy films. How to Train Your Dragon is a great example of that.”

The post Gerard Butler Says Live-Action ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Was Destiny first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

GERARD Butler admits it was a struggle to play nice with co-star O’Shea Jackson in action-packed sequel Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.

The Scots hunk, 55, has reprised his role as elite copper Big Nick O’Brien as he travels Europe with career criminal Donnie Wilson, portrayed by the son of legendary rapper Ice Cube.

It was revealed at the end of the first film that Wilson wasn’t just the getaway driver — but was in fact the mastermind behind the whole plot to rob the Federal Reserve Bank of downtown Los Angeles.

He was last seen escaping to London canvassing a diamond exchange as O’Brien realised he’d been outsmarted.

Butler, who shot to fame as King Leonidas in 2007 flick 300, enjoyed finally getting to grips with on-screen enemy Jackson, 33, after their characters were mostly kept apart in the first film.

The Paisley-born actor joked: “I really liked working with O’Shea on Den of Thieves, but there’s only so much you can bond with somebody when you’re choking them out, punching them or slapping them.”

O’Brien is benched by his bosses after failing to capture Wilson, and his wife soon files for divorce.

Desperate for revenge, he ends up teaming with the same man he was hunting as they plan the ultimate crime at one of the impenetrable World Diamond Centres in Antwerp, Belgium.

The sequel introduces a new criminal crew called the Panthers, allegedly based on real criminals throughout Europe.

Butler said: “When we’re reintroduced to Nick, he’s going through a rough time and grappling with everything that’s happened since he was outmanoeuvred by Donnie at the end of the first film.

“On the one hand, Nick is impressed by Donnie’s smarts; on the other, he wants another shot at him.”

He gets his chance when a flight carrying diamonds from Johannesburg is hijacked in Brussels and thieves dressed in police SWAT gear make off with a cache of jewels worth tens of millions, including a single huge pink diamond.

He immediately suspects Donnie is involved and gets assigned to the Pantera task force dedicated to putting the thieves out of business.

The angry cop breaks bad when he masterminds a plot with Wilson to get on the wrong side of the greatest jewel robbery in history.

Butler was shocked at how easily the movie upped the ante from the first instalment after worrying they couldn’t match its intensity.

He said: “We thought, how can we raise it to the next level? In Den of Thieves we went to the Federal Reserve. How do you go even bigger than that?

“I knew we had an epic tale full of character and excitement. Donnie and Nick are on this collision course. Nick’s going to get his revenge, but it doesn’t quite turn out the way you think. He’s been completely hoodwinked by Donnie, who got the better of him at the end of the first film.

“Nick’s always been impressed with Donnie. He has a worthy adversary there, and a silverback gorilla like Nick needs another silverback gorilla to wrestle with.”

The film’s explosive scenes demanded a lot from the cast who performed a lot of their own stunts.

Jackson lost two and a half stone for the role and Butler appears similarly ripped.

The film’s impressive roster of athletic talent also included a number of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) champions such as Dutch kickboxer Rico Verhoeven, Brazilian UFC legend Vitor Belfort, former UFC title holder Michael Bisping and Ciryl Gane, a current heavyweight competitor in the UFC.

Butler said: “These actor- athletes have a particular energy, which is that they want to learn, they want to do this. Nobody has their kind of work ethic.”

One of the many thrilling scenes involves a car chase across mountainous roads.

Porsche had five custom- designed Taycan cars that were about to be destroyed because they weren’t built for on-road use and the Den of Thieves 2 team snapped them up.

Butler enjoyed his training, but executing stunts and using weapons inside the vehicle was challenging.

He said: “There was so much manoeuvring of guns inside the Porsche which, as much as it’s a beautiful car, wasn’t designed for reloading large guns.

“The tricky thing was, we sometimes had to fire the weapons backwards. We had to lift off the seat, put our butts back almost into the driver’s face, turn our legs around, and then have one hand out the window.

“This would all be happening while driving at full speed and making turns around sharp bends.”

The movie was mostly filmed in Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands.

Although it’s a beautiful part of the world, the warm climate didn’t always go down well with Scot Butler during filming.

During one heist sequence at the Hatton Bourse, he and another five thieves were stuck in a very small elevator shaft. They were squeezed between the wall and the cab and there was no air conditioning.

Butler said: “At one point we filmed inside these little box rooms with the whole camera crew. We were dressed in black neoprene bodysuits with thick black masks that stick out half an inch from your face.

“You put them on and it feels like you’re being suffocated. There’s no oxygen, there’s no air and it’s so hot. A tiny little room with six actors who are panicking, all dressed in black.

“We’re sweating like crazy, and it’s so hot you think you’re going to have a heat stroke.”

“Then Christian (director Christian Gudegast) comes in and films it quickly, in guerilla-filmmaking style.”

But it was all worth it, with Butler confident they’ve made the ultimate action movie.

He added: “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera has it all — drama, thrills, action, comedy. It’s also very smart and really gets into the workings of this incredible world of high-stakes theft.”

Den of Thieves: Pantera is available to stream on Lionsgate+

The post Gerard Butler admits it was a struggle to bond with co-star on set of latest action film first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.

Gerard Butler says his experience on 300 was not without its battle wounds.

In a chat with his Den of Thieves 2: Pantera costar O’Shea Jackson Jr. for a PEOPLE “Comparing Notes” segment, the 55-year-old actor recalled the making of the 2006 historical action epic, directed and co-written by Zack Snyder.

“I remember every day somebody was getting taken to the hospital,” Butler claims. “You’d be doing a fight, you turn around, there’s a guy down there, a spear went in his eye. Another time, you turn around, there’s a guy over there who just fell, broke his ankle. I mean, it was insane.”

While he doesn’t say exactly how he himself was injured on 300, Butler does recall “getting taken down by a huge set of waves” while making 2012’s Chasing Mavericks, to the point where he “almost drowned,” despite learning how to surf for the movie.

“I thought I was done. They had to take me out, take me to hospital, put me out, give me the defibrillator. I mean, it was intense,” the actor recalled.

He also said he has “been in car smashes” with “James Bond himself,” Pierce Brosnan, “who drove me straight into a wall.”

“And this thing was supposed to stop as he was supposed to slam the brakes,” Butler continued. “We hit a wall on a rooftop, 3-foot-high wall, full speed, in a Range Rover. It destroyed my neck, and it was after 300. I was already so beaten up in 300.”

“And I spent a day filming in the Icelandic Sea, got basically hypothermia there, overheat(ed) once in Montreal doing a movie,” he went on of other ailments he endured while on the job. “They put wetsuits on us, but then we had to put our whole costume on, and it was 110 degrees. And we were in that all day … and we’re still having to perform so many things.”

The actor also had mishaps with costars Hilary Swank, whom he starred with in 2007’s P.S. I Love You, and Angelina Jolie, his costar in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003).

“I’ve scarred Hilary Swank on the head … she has a scar. Almost shot Angelina Jolie in the face. I was coming down, hanging upside down. I had to fire a gun, but I had no control over where this thing went. So I was just firing and I just missed it,” he said. “I’ve been shot by bullets, casings, explosions. A whole camera rig once fell down on Hilary Swank and I.”

And despite the fact that he says he’s “been rushed to hospital” as a result of acting-related injuries, Butler tells Jackson, 33, of the stunt work, “It’s awesome. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is in theaters now.

The post Gerard Butler Says Actors Were Sent to the Hospital ‘Every Day’ During Filming of 300: ‘Insane’ (Exclusive) first appeared on Gerard Butler Dot Net.