‘How to Train Your Dragon’ taking a page out of the Disney playbook draws a decidedly mixed response

DreamWorks seemed to take the teaser trailer for The Little Mermaid remake as a challenge, since shortly after its unveiling, the studio announced that it had started working on a live-action rendition of the beloved How To Train Your Dragon franchise. That’s despite the stories of Hiccup, Toothless and Astrid seemingly having wrapped up with 2019’s How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, shortly followed by an animated short called Homecoming, which takes place before the epilogue of the third film. Since Dec. 2021, DreamWorks have partnered with Hulu and Peacock to bring us DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms, a story set 1,300 years after the events of THW and deviates entirely from the prior protagonists, instead focusing on a new band of misfits and their adventures.

You’d think that after the success of the closing chapter of Hiccups’ coming-of-age evolution from scrawny runt to Chief of Berk, DreamWorks would be satisfied. Well, think again. If the live-action Jungle Book, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast etc. were any indication, Disney’s attempts to revive animated classics for a modern audience… stink. But apparently, DreamWorks missed the memo, because they’re doing the unthinkable and following in Disney’s footsteps. Announced on Feb. 16, Canadian filmmaker Dean DeBlois, the writer and director behind Lilo & Stitch as well as the previous HTTYD films, would be returning to helm the live-action production as director, writer, and producer.

Knowing that the remake is in DeBlois’ capable hands has fans breathing a sigh of relief, but many are still worried that the dreaded Disney curse may have been passed on.

Some long-time DreamWorks followers are not happy with the announcement, even going so far as to point out that it’s unnecessary to ‘revive’ How To Train Your Dragon because it hasn’t been around long enough to feel nostalgic. Let’s remember that the first film came out in 2010, and while that makes some of us feel old, it really isn’t that far away. How To Train Your Dragon would be celebrating its 15-year anniversary in 2025. We’ve only just entered 2023! That being said, there’s also the matter of DreamWorks hoping on the bandwagon of copying Disney. Find some originality, would you?

Another outraged fan called out DreamWorks’ decision, calling it “insulting to animation as a whole,” and they couldn’t be more right. Suggesting live-action remakes of animated films only implies that the animated versions aren’t good enough on their own, therefore a live-action version is needed to ‘outdo’ the original and ‘improve’ upon its mistakes. But we’d argue that How To Train Your Dragon is practically perfect in every way. Wait, that’s Mary Poppins. Wrong franchise.

But apparently, not every fans feels the same rage towards DreamWorks’ decision. In fact, there are those out there who are in full support of a live-action remake — or at the very least bare some curiosity — so it’s not a unanimous boycotting, but the votes are certainly in favor of those against the idea. Still, many argue that Disney’s failued endeavors don’t speak for DreamWorks since they’re two separate companies. So in that case, only time will tell if DreamWorks learns from Disney’s downfall.