'How to Train Your Dragon' sequel in fall 2013? TV series to be "darker and more dramatic"

How to Train Your Dragon was such a success for Dreamworks, both critically and financially, that a lot of people think it should best Toy Story 3 at the Oscars this year. I'm not part of that camp, but it was definitely a fun film, and by far the best that Dreamworks has ever produced.  We've known for awhile that a sequel was in the works, with plans for more films already bouncing around.  The plan is to have the next flick completed some time around the summer of 2013, but according to producer Tim Johnson, it might take a tiny bit longer. He tells Badtaste.it...

Johnson: I think that we’re talking about fall of 2013. So we have about about two and a half years, a little less than three years. For animation, that’s fast, although for a sequel it’s not that bad. We usually take four years or more for an original movie, and a lot of that is just discovery: finding the world, the design, the look of it, how light and color works. Obviously, when you’ve done a first movie you’ve solved a lot of those problems and you can go faster.

Johnson also stated that the sequel will be much bigger than the first, and that Dean Debois will be writing and directing. Debois was on board as co-director and co-writer for last year's film.

But what about that HTTYD TV series that Cartoon Network picked? Is that still going on?

Johnson: We’ve just embarked on it. We have a partner in Nickelodeon for doing the Kung Fu Panda series, and that’s a show that’s appropriate for Nickelodeon. It’s a little bit younger, it’s the fun, sort of outrageous adventures of Po. With Dragon we’re not going to be doing Nickelodeon, we’ll be doing a little darker and more dramatic, much like the fim. The goal is not to change it or lighten it in order to make a TV series. The goal is to stay true to it and try to make a TV series that is actually fairly challenging and fairly dense. It’s really in the early going. We have a sort of plan for it, but the scripts are just starting. It would I believe be ahead of the second film by about a year, so I believe the TV series goal is for 2012.

I like the idea of maintaining the tone of the movie, but these sort of side projects rarely hook me. You'll be hard pressed to find a bigger Star Wars fan than me, and I can't watch that awful Clone Wars crap on Cartoon Network. I wonder if they'll use the series to act as a "bridge" of sorts to the sequel? Or will it be completely stand-alone?