Dragon Trainer, controversy over a character in the live-action. But the director has already silenced everyone

After the release of the official trailer, heavy criticism hit a particular casting choice. But today comes the dry reply from Dean DeBlois

Image Credit: Universal Pictures

The director of the long-awaited live-action adaptation of Dragon Trainer clears the controversy sparked by a particular casting choice: that of Astrid, represented as a blonde Viking in the animated saga inaugurated by Dreamworks in 2010, now entrusted to Nico Parker, a London actress who we already appreciated in the first season of The Last Of Us, daughter of the famous Afro-British Top Model Thandiwe Newton (formerly known as Thandie Newton). With more or less offensive tones, after the launch of the first official teaser trailer, the same criticisms that have hit the most varied remakes, reboots, and film adaptations in the past arose online: 

from Death in the Netflix series based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman to the choice of Halle Bailey for the action of The Little Mermaid in 2023 to that of Rachel Zegler in Snow White by Marc Webb, coming out on March 20, 2025. But the response of director Dean DeBlois was not long in coming, and on his Instagram profile he chose to publish the same response that he had already posted on a fan site dedicated to the world of How To Train Your Dragon (here is the link to the comment). In the previous comment, a fan of the animated saga How to Train Your Dragon explicitly responded to the criticisms: «You should all forget about all this stuff like: 

“Oh, but Astrid is not black, she is white!” Here we are not talking about skin color but about acting. Even in the original version, the voice actress was Latin American, what will you do now if you hate her too? The director of the live-action replies seizes the opportunity to silence the controversy: «Exactly. We cast many actors who were physically very similar to their animated counterparts. But we chose the actors and actresses who best embodied the spirit and personality of the characters since the tribe in this live-action version is made up of descendants of the best Dragon Fighters, coming from any place where the Vikings have ever traveled. Historically, we are talking about a very large and diverse space, where different cultures mixed together» explains Dean DeBlois.

And he continues: «Let's not forget that this is a work of fiction, not a reconstruction of historical facts, and everything will be revealed over time. We are not doing a sequence-by-sequence remake. We have remained faithful to the key moments to honor the original, of which I remain particularly proud. In the teaser, you could only see some of these moments. Instead of telling a completely new adventure, our ambition is to embellish and deepen even more, without ever forgetting the story that all fans love so much," concludes the director of How to Train Your Dragon, coming out in the United States on June 25, 2025.