The first ‘Lilo & Stitch’ wasn’t a blockbuster. Disney’s remake might be one of the year’s biggest

Breea Milburn has been a Stitch fan since the beginning.

As a child, she got hooked after seeing the mischievous blue alien crash the fourth wall and disrupt scenes from classic Disney films such as “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” in the trailers for the original 2002 animated movie, “Lilo & Stitch.”

Now at 32 years old, the South Carolina resident has amassed a collection of Stitch merchandise — including pins, plush dolls and a purse that makes it look like he’s attached to her hip — largely given to her by family and friends.

Although Milburn loves Stitch’s troublemaking ways, she said she also appreciates the serious themes the movie tackles by following a young girl’s adventures and struggles in Hawaii with her sister after their parents’ death.

Stitch is thrown in as the “humor element in what’s really a dark story, but also a more realistic story that I think can resonate more with people,” she said. “This is more than just a character that’s pure chaos.”

Milburn, and the legions of Stitch aficionados like her, are why Walt Disney Co. may be about to have its next $1-billion blockbuster movie.

The new live-action remake, out this weekend, is expected to haul in $120 million to $150 million through Monday at the domestic box office, according to analysts’ estimates. That would be an extraordinary success, especially coming after Disney’s latest redo of an animated classic, “Snow White,” flopped badly.

It’s all the more surprising because the 2002 “Lilo & Stitch” was only a modest box-office performer, grossing a total of $273 million worldwide.

That movie came during a fallow period after the so-called Disney renaissance that created acclaimed animated films such as “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Tarzan.” There are no permanent rides in Disney’s theme parks focused on Stitch to keep him constantly in the public eye.

The audience for the new movie, which cost an estimated $100 million to produce, is expected to be multi-generational, with children well-represented alongside millennials who were kids when the 2002 film came out, said Alan Bergman, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment. Although the character has its strongest appeal among girls, Disney is banking on boys showing up too.

“We do believe with this movie, we have the opportunity to get everybody,” he said. “To do the kind of box office that I think we’re going to do, you need to get everybody, and I do believe we will.”

Stitch has become an unlikely star among Disney‘s characters. The blue alien is so popular that he ranks in the top 10 best-selling Disney franchises, alongside stalwarts such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the princesses, Star Wars and Marvel, the company said.

The “Lilo & Stitch” franchise, which includes some animated series, TV films and direct-to-video movies, has driven 546 million hours of global viewership on Disney+, with the original 2002 movie accounting for more than half of that. Viewership of the “Lilo & Stitch” catalog also has gone up significantly every year, based on the hours streamed, Disney said.

On the retail side, sales of Stitch-themed merchandise totaled about $2.6 billion last year. Some current highlights are collectible Spam cans, a more than 4-foot-tall remote controlled inflatable, Stitch dog costumes and “Lilo & Stitch”-inspired makeup sets.

Lilo and Stitch dance in a still from the 2002 animated film.

(Disney)

Bergman said Stitch’s enduring popularity “definitely” played a role in green-lighting the live-action film. And there could be more to come.

“This property lends itself to more, and we’re figuring out exactly what that is,” Bergman said. “Clearly, the characters have stood the test of time, and this [film] is going to reinvigorate the franchise yet again.”

So what is it about this koala-esque alien who picks his nose with his own tongue that has resonated with consumers for more than two decades?

Although Stitch is often described as a fun-loving agent of chaos, his deeper characteristics make him not so different from other Disney heroes, said Lindsay Hahn, an assistant professor of communication at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

As a media psychologist who focuses on morality and has researched more than 730 Disney movies, Hahn found that the Disney hero prototype is often willing to break the rules if that’s what’s necessary to help others. (Think of Mulan, who flouts authority and enlists in the army to save her father.)

Stitch’s dedication to family and care for others — in addition to his commotion-making ways — puts him squarely in that mold, she said.

“In many ways, he checks all of those boxes quite perfectly,” Hahn said. “He just tends to do it in a way that seems maybe a little more outside the typical Disney hero because he’s seemingly unpredictable and cute.”

Stitch’s emphasis on finding his place in the world also may be a factor in his oddly relatable appeal, said Tamar Rimmon, vice president of research and analytics strategy at Fandom, which hosts information pages on entertainment topics.

“There’s this emotional connection. The whole theme of finding your own family, I think, is something that really resonates in our current culture, especially with millennials and Gen Z,” she said.

Out of nearly 2,000 Disney franchise communities, “Lilo & Stitch” has ranked in the top 20 for the last five years, according to data from Fandom. Stitch, in particular, was the 11th most popular Disney character on Fandom in the last year, and the 21st most popular character over the last five years, the company said. (Rankings are based on page views on Fandom’s site.)

In 2024, Stitch was largely surpassed only by characters who were featured in recent movies, including the emotions from Disney-Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Scar and Mufasa from “The Lion King” and Moana. The only three older characters that beat Stitch were Mickey Mouse, Stitch’s female counterpart Angel, and Elsa from the animated hit “Frozen.”

“There are constantly new [intellectual properties] that will come and unseat characters who come from older movies,” Rimmon said. “But that’s what I think speaks even more strongly to the staying power of Stitch.”

That sort of lasting popularity reminds Milburn, the Stitch fan, of another prominent and highly merchandiseable character who isn’t tied to current film or TV — Hello Kitty.

“It’s that familiar face,” she said. “Just by his name and his cuteness alone, he has been able to capture generations and generations.”