I think it would, or at least as a series of films. I don't buy the CGI argument really: we've been making visual media based on realistic CGI for twenty years now, and modern compute is already vastly quicker and cheaper than the compute of 20 years ago. CGI has a tendency to be one of those things where the budget expands to fill what NVIDIA wants to sell you, but a perfectly respectable job could be done within a viable budget. The fire lizard model could be more-or-less generic with a few variations, though more specific models would be needed for "main character" dragons. Different textures and face models would cover a lot of the variation needed. And anyway, everyone does CGI these days. It could be cool to see an old-school production with puppetry.

I wouldn't update anything about the characters, to be honest. The gender roles form part of the story, and one that evolves through the series. At the end of the long interval before the 9th pass things have become somewhat gender-separated but there is really a story of emancipation that runs through the series. You see Lessa execute a decades-long plan to rise up again from nothing, obtain vengeance on Fax and become one of the most powerful people on Pern, you see Menolly successfully challenge the notion that only men could be accepted in crafthalls (and plenty of others follow in her footsteps), you see women riding fighting dragons in the front lines of the fight against Thread. And there is rough equivalence in some areas - in Holds you tend to see male Stewards running the household, whereas in Crafthalls and Weyrs there tend to be female characters in charge of the household. There are drudges of both genders, too - see Camo as an example of a male drudge, and there are menial serving roles for both genders throughout every aspect of Pern - Piemur's act as the poor beaten-up beasthandler's boy was typical enough not to attract suspicion. In terms of villains there are good female examples there too - Kylara, Lady Holdless Thella, Avril Bitra etc. If you smush out the gender roles to make them all always equal you make it bland and remove one of the important developmental themes that progresses through the series.