Dean DeBlois discovered Mason Thames when he watched The Black Phone on a plane.
Dean DeBlois discovered Mason Thames when he watched The Black Phone on a plane
The 55-year-old filmmaker is at the helm of the new movie How To Train Your Dragon and knew that he had to cast the 15-year-old actor in the leading role when he watched him in the 2021 drama during a flight.
Mason told The Hollywood Reporter: “Apparently, they had been through a bunch of Hiccups. So Dean told me he watched The Black Phone on a plane, and then he was like, ‘Why is this kid not auditioning for Hiccup? Let’s get him in the room,.
“It truly does feel like destiny in a way, and it’s so crazy that a little coincidence like that has changed my life.”
Meanwhile, Mason explained that he had always wanted to be the leading character of How To Train Your Dragon – which was originally released as an animation in 2010 –
He said: “I was like, ‘I want to be that guy.’ I related to Hiccup so much.
“God, I never thought that I’d be given the chance to step into his shoes and maybe affect kids the way Hiccup affected me [as a kid]. It’s such an honor.”
Mason is reprising his role as Finney Shaw in the sequel to The Black Phone, and claimed that the new horror will “affect” the audience in a way that most movies in the same genre do not.
He said: “What [co-writers Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill] have done with the character of Finney is truly incredible.
“In a lot of horror movies, a character’s friends and family will die in a horrible way, and then in the next movie, they’re off at college, living a happy, fun life. But the reality of going through something that traumatic is that it will affect you. You will probably not be the same, especially when it’s a kid who’s dealing with that.”