In the dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood, producers often have to fight hard to attach themselves to the hottest projects. But for Bonnie Arnold, producer of such animated blockbusters as Toy Story, Tarzan and Over the Hedge, all it took was a casual weekend conversation with DreamWorks Animation head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg to land one of the studio's most coveted in-development titles, How to Train Your Dragon.

"I was working on Over the Hedge one Saturday afternoon and walked by Jeffrey's office and he asked me to come in," she remembers. "We were sitting there chatting and he asked, 'So what are you going to do after Over the Hedge is done?' I said, 'What do you think I should do?' and he replied, 'Anything you want.' So I said, 'Well, I want to do How to Train Your Dragon and he said 'Done.' So I was very lucky that I got the pick of the litter!"

That quiet Saturday meeting in the spring of 2006 marked the beginning of a four-year process that culminates in the March 26 arrival of How to Train Your Dragon on 2D, 3D and IMAX screens nationwide. It's the first of three 3D-enhanced animated spectacles that DreamWorks Animation will release in 2010, a new record for an American animation house, and also a film that the studio is hoping will launch a new franchise to stand alongside Shrek (which releases its fourth and likely final installment in May) and Madagascar (which has a third chapter planned for 2012).

They've certainly got enough material to fuel future movies, as How to Train Your Dragon is actually the first entry in an ongoing series of children's fantasy novels penned by British author Cressida Cowell (who is no relation to “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, although funnily enough, her husband's name is also Simon). To date, Cowell has written nine books in the How to... franchise, all of which follow the exploits of a tween Viking who answers to the odd name of Hiccup. As the title suggests, Hiccup is the proud owner of a dragon named Toothless that accompanies him on his many misadventures. DreamWorks acquired the movie rights to Dragon in 2004 and the book made the rounds at the studio, eventually landing on Arnold's desk. "I read it and I thought, 'I like this story,’” she says. "I felt that the sensibility and everything about it was me."

At the same time, Arnold is the first to admit that the movie version of Dragon departs significantly from the book. "Initially everyone felt that the book was the movie and we proceeded to storyboard the film based on the book. But at some point we realized that it really wasn't the movie. It was a great story, but it just didn't feel like a big film. It needed more and we struggled a bit trying to figure out what that was." In order to keep the movie on its planned production schedule, Arnold turned to Chris Sanders, who previously co-directed the 2003 hit Lilo & Stitch for Disney and had since joined DreamWorks to oversee another project, which was subsequently put on hold so he could devote his full attention to making Dragon fly.

With only a year to go until the movie's scheduled release date, Sanders' first act as director was to hire his Lilo collaborator Dean DeBlois as a co-writer and co-director. "We threw out the story one year before release, which was terrifying," Sanders admits now. "It took someone like Bonnie who has been through the process to stay calm and allow us to do that. She acted like it was no big deal, even though it was a very big deal."

For her part, Arnold says she knew she had hired the right filmmaking team to accomplish the daunting task of re-conceiving the entire movie on a tight deadline. "Dean and Chris work great together because their sensibilities mesh. They looked at all the elements and took things that had already existed in pre-production and did a little of 'move that here' and 'change this there' and we moved forward. They were the spark plugs we needed in the Italian sports cars the studio is so good at assembling."

As in the book, the film version of How to Train Your Dragon takes place on the mythical island Berk, which is shared by a sizeable dragon population as well as the Viking tribe led by Hiccup's imposing father, Stoick. But that's roughly where the similarities end. In the movie, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel, a member of Judd Apatow's posse of young comic actors and star of She's Out of My League and the upcoming The Sorcerer's Apprentice) is a gawky screw-up who is largely dismissed as a nuisance by the rest of his of village, including his dad (Gerard Butler). Humans and dragons are also not on friendly terms, regularly engaging in turf battles over land and food.

On one nighttime raid, Hiccup fires off a lucky shot and downs one of the rarest of dragon breeds, a Night Fury. But when the time comes to slay his prize, he can't bring himself to go through with it. Instead, he winds up secretly bonding with the dragon—whom he names Toothless—and discovers that these winged, fire-breathing reptiles aren't the mindless killing machines his fellow Vikings believe them to be.

"We had set out to do a movie about marching to the beat of your own drummer," DeBlois notes. "But what happened along the way was this other theme of seeing yourself in the eyes of the enemy and that opened up a number of new possibilities. I'm glad we didn't have that in mind because I think it would have come across as preachy. The fact that it evolved out of the material was great."



Encouraged by Arnold, the filmmakers made a number of other additions and alterations, most notably the inclusion of a tough-as-nails female Viking named Astrid (America Ferrara) who acts as a rival/love interest for Hiccup. "We felt we needed a woman represented in the story," Arnold explains. "There is a female character in some of the books, but she's not the character we created. All the little kids that have seen the movie love Astrid—girls and boys."

Sanders and DeBlois also conceived a bold new ending for the film that leaves its hero with a significant battle scar. So far the finale has resonated with both test audiences and, more importantly, the author. After her latest viewing of the movie at a recent DreamWorks press event in New York, Cowell emerged from the theatre positively giddy. "I really like the ending. It's very much in the spirit of the books, which are kind of bittersweet. You always know that the film will be different from the book, because it's a different medium. But you have to be open, because it often brings you something wonderful and surprising."

As Dragon's sole producer, Arnold's job description varies depending on which member of the large cast and crew you talk to. Baruchel, for example, proudly refers to her as his "other mother" and credits her with making him feel at ease behind the microphone. "Her legacy to me is that every time I showed up to work, she had a hamburger waiting for me without fail. There's nothing better than showing up to record and having a bag from McDonald's waiting for you."

For Sanders and DeBlois, Arnold served as a crucial mediator between their production team and the studio. "Animated films have to hit certain milestones; otherwise everyone panics and she was really good at doing those reality checks," DeBlois observes. "She also gave us the room we needed to rewrite the script and make creative decisions."

Arnold also helped them draft award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins to serve as a visual consultant on the movie, working with the animators to give the images the kind of heightened realism the directors wanted to achieve. "He spent days and days with our crew discussing the film's look," Arnold remembers. "It was like a Roger Deakins master class."

Arnold herself defines her role as producer in broader terms. "A lot of my job is just making sure that everyone else is doing their job," she says, laughing. "The reason I enjoy producing for animation is because I feel like it's more like how I imagine producers worked in Hollywood in the '30s and '40s. I feel like those producers had their toes in every aspect of filmmaking. Right now, because of the way the live-action film business has changed, you often have producers with different specialties; one of them may own the script, another one is on set on a day-to-day basis, and then there's the guy who arranges the financing. With animation, I feel like I can do a little bit of everything. On Dragon, I worked with Chris and Dean on creative decisions and served as their snowplow function—I cleared a path for them to get where they wanted to go. I also had a studio role to let the studio oversee the budget and the schedule. This is show business, so you've got make sure that the both the show and the business parts satisfy everyone within the parameters given to you."

One area where Arnold often involves herself is in the marketing of her movies. Dragon, for example, has an inventive ad campaign that included a unique promotional partnership with the 2010 Winter Olympics, for which DreamWorks produced seven original animated shorts featuring the movie's characters competing in various winter sports. "Bonnie really came into her own towards the end of the production process because she believes so passionately in the movies she's involved in that she goes to bat for you when it comes to things like marketing and exposure," says DeBlois.

"I don't pretend to know the marketing department's job, but I do know the movie," Arnold explains. "I've seen it with audiences and I know what we can get done and what's available to show. You want to put the best foot forward when you put the movie out there."

As if overseeing a multi-million-dollar 3D animated feature wasn't enough of a challenge, in the middle of Dragon's production, Arnold somehow found time to produce her first live-action movie since serving as an associate producer on 1991's The Addams Family.

That film was The Last Station, based on Jay Parini's novel about the troubled final years in the life of iconic Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Directed by Michael Hoffman, The Last Station opened to strong reviews in December and scored Oscar nominations for its stars, Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. "I first read the book 20 years ago when Anthony Quinn brought it to me with the intention of playing Tolstoy," Arnold recalls. "So I've had the rights for a number of years and I was always trying to get it set up between animated projects. As with any independent film, sometimes you just don't know when all the puzzle pieces are going to come together and it just so happened that they all came together while I was making Dragon."


Because of her commitment to DreamWorks, Arnold wasn't able to be as hands-on with Station as she would have liked, but the studio allowed her to take several short sabbaticals to visit the set and the editing room. "I'm really proud of the movie. It's very different from Dragon, but it came from a similar impulse. When I read the book, I said, 'There's a movie here and it's a movie I would want to see.' I'm always on the lookout for things I'm interested in seeing as a moviegoer because I love movies and the heart and soul of filmmaking is good storytelling. I just want to see a simple, well-told story with characters I care about, whether it's Michael Hoffman's The Last Station or Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois' How to Train Your Dragon."

Looking ahead, Arnold is eagerly awaiting word from DreamWorks as to whether she should pack her bags for a return trip to the island of Berk. “How to Train Your Dragon is all about bringing Toothless and Hiccup together and now there are so many places to go from here. We can explore where Hiccup's name comes from, or tackle the story of Hiccup and his friends or cover the relationship between him and his father. To me, Hiccup is like the Obama of Berk—he's looking for peace and looking towards the future. He's a teaching hero, which is different from some of the other DreamWorks films. I like that people identify with him."