Should Dreamworks Be Following Disney Into Live-Action Remakes of Animated Classics?

Dreamworks shocked the world on Tuesday with a teaser for the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, and fans are already wondering if this is the start of a trend for the studio. Unsurprisingly, commenters couldn’t help comparing this move to Disney’s recent slate of live-action remakes – for better or worse. Financially, it seems like more of these movies are inevitable, but creatively, it may not be the best move for Dreamworks.

Disney has always made live-action movies, but this current trend of re-adaptations really began in 2010 with Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. They’re called “live-action” for lack of a better term, but obviously, due to the nature of these stories, they are made up mostly of CGI with human actors added in – usually, though not in cases like The Lion King. At this point, most fans seem to understand that these are traps and we step into them willingly. These remakes perform well at the box office and get lots of traffic on streaming services, but they don’t recapture the magic of their animated counterparts, and are generally quite forgettable. If anything, they’re an effective way to get today’s kids interested in their parents’ favorite movies.

How to Train Your Dragon first debuted in 2010, so its live-action remake will come out just 15 years later. that’s a faster turn-around than any of Disney’s remakes so far – although the mouse will steal back that record in 2026 with its live-action remake of Moana. It’s not hard to believe it will be a success – HTTYD is a massive franchise, and its practically ubiquitous for kids in its target age range, who are bombarded with movies, TV shows, video games and merchandise at every turn.

Changing Mediums

It’s harder to imagine how this remake will do anything better than the original. The teaser showed that the look of the dragons hasn’t really changed, which means at least half of the focus of the movie will look exactly the same. The other half – human star Mason Thames – may allow viewers to identify with the story more and imagine themselves in Hiccup’s shoes. On the other hand, he may look out of place next to a cartoon dragon, and he may struggle to be as expressive as his animated predecessor. As this is literally supposed to be a shot-for-shot remake, there’s nowhere else for this movie to differentiate itself from the original.

Another key difference is the source material. How to Train Your Dragon is based on a children’s book written by Cressida Cowell and published in 2003. By comparison, most of Disney’s biggest live-action remakes have been based on fairy tales so old they don’t have an original credited author. It’s easier to accept that Disney is doing the same story again when it wasn’t theirs to begin with, and it’s been told over and over for centuries. Without that history behind it, audiences may not feel the same kind of nostalgia. There won’t be any smug older brothers in the audience whispering about how the original Little Mermaid threw herself into the sea and died.

Revisions

That’s one of the big issues with these remakes in general – modernizing them for current sensibilities. Disney has been criticized by some for changing their remakes to pacify “woke” viewers, but it’s not as simple as that. The remakes actively address criticisms that have evolved into memes over the years, many of which did not need to be changed. At best, it strips the stories of their charm, but at worst it upsets the whole story and creates new plot holes where none were before. One of the worst cases is Aladdin, which added in a ballad for Princess Jasmine that muddled her quest for agency with a thirst for tangible political power.

This is unlikely to be an issue in How to Train Your Dragon, but if Dreamworks goes all-in on the live-action front, it could get awkward down the line. A live-action Shrek might be forced to drop some bawdy jokes and fill that time with something new, but it wouldn’t have the timely critiques of Michael Eisner to lean on. A live-action take on Kung Fu Panda would have to answer for the years-long rumbling about representation for Asian actors, giving the new cast an uphill battle – and so on.

The upsides are much simpler – these movies would probably make money for the studio, and would get young viewers interested in movies in general. Whether you like the idea or not, we’ll probably have to focus on this silver lining because How to Train Your Dragon (2025) seems destined to be a box office hit. It is scheduled to premiere on June 13, 2025. The original is streaming now on Max.