Lilo & Stitch

Did You Know?

• The film's soundtrack includes five songs by Elvis Presley and two of his songs re-recorded by contemporary artists, performed by Wynonna and the A-Teens.
• The voice cast includes Daveigh Chase as Lilo, Chris Sanders as Stitch, Tia Carrere as Nani, and Ving Rhames as Cobra Bubbles.
• The plot begins on the planet Turo, where Dr. Jumba Jookiba is convicted of illegal genetic experimentation for creating Experiment 626.

Production

Chris Sanders created the character of Stitch in 1985 for an unsuccessful children's book pitch, but abandoned the project due to difficulty condensing the story. After being hired by Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1987, Sanders worked on The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King before becoming head of story on Mulan. In 1997, at a retreat at Michael Eisner's farm in Vermont, Disney executives discussed the future animation slate, and Thomas Schumacher suggested producing a film that would be the "Dumbo for our generation."

Schumacher approached Sanders, telling him the studio wanted the next film to be his. During a karaoke dinner at the Walt Disney World Swan Resort, Schumacher asked Sanders if he had anything to develop, and Sanders recalled his earlier children's book project. At his next meeting, Sanders pitched a story set in a remote, nonurban location where Stitch crash-lands in a forest and interacts with woodland animals, living on a farm in rural Kansas. Schumacher recommended that Stitch interact with people instead, arguing that the animal world is already alien to humans and that setting the story in a human world would provide better contrast. Sanders later revisited his forest-creature concept in The Wild Robot.

Release

Lilo & Stitch premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 16, 2002. Attendees included Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, Wynonna Judd, Phil Collins, Gregory Hines, and Jodie Foster. Chris Sanders pitched a subversive marketing idea in which Stitch invaded other Disney properties, which Dick Cook approved. Four parody teaser trailers were made, featuring Stitch interrupting scenes from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, with most original actors reprising their roles.

The trailers included the AC/DC song "Back in Black." Tie-in promotions included Lilo & Stitch toys in McDonald's Happy Meals. In the United Kingdom, trailers and television ads featured a cover of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" by Gareth Gates, while in the U.S., "Hound Dog" was used. The marketing campaign presented Stitch as the "Disney Family Black Sheep."

Comics of Lilo & Stitch ran in Disney Adventures before the film's release, detailing events leading up to the film for both title characters. These events were later contradicted by the sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, rendering the comics noncanonical, but they introduced Experiment 625, Reuben, who became a main character in subsequent movies and TV series.

Reception

Lilo & Stitch debuted in second place with $35.3 million over its first weekend, just behind Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. It dropped to third the following week, trailing Minority Report and Mr. Deeds, and stayed there even after Men in Black II opened. The film kept attracting families while heavy hitters like Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones were still packing theaters. In the UK, it opened at number one with $2.4 million, ahead of Signs and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, before Red Dragon took the top spot in week two.

Domestically, it earned $145.8 million, with an additional $127.3 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $273.1 million. It became the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2002, behind Ice Age, and was one of only two animated features that year to cross the $100 million mark in the U.S. and Canada. Box Office Mojo estimates it sold over 25 million tickets during its original run. Critics were generally positive: Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 86% approval rating from 152 reviews, with the consensus calling it "edgier than traditional Disney fare" and praising its family themes.

Metacritic assigned a score of 73 out of 100, indicating generally favorable reviews, and audiences gave it an average "A" grade on CinemaScore.

Legacy

On August 26, 2003, Disney released a direct-to-video sequel, Stitch! The Movie, which served as the pilot to the television series Lilo & Stitch: The Series. That series ran for 65 episodes from September 20, 2003, to July 29, 2006, following Lilo and Stitch's efforts to capture and rehabilitate Jumba's remaining experiments. The series and the original parts of the franchise set in Hawaii ended with the television film Leroy & Stitch, which aired on June 23, 2006.

On August 30, 2005, another direct-to-video sequel, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, was released, set between the original film and Stitch! The Movie. In this film, Stitch has a glitch because his molecules were never fully charged, contrary to an original opening seen on the DVD release. The DVD also contained a short film, The Origin of Stitch, bridging Stitch Has a Glitch and Stitch!

The Movie. In March 2008, Disney announced an anime aimed at the Japanese market titled Stitch!, which ran from October 2008 to March 2011, featuring a Japanese girl named Yuna Kamihara in place of Lilo and set on a fictional island in Okinawa Prefecture. From March 27 to April 6, 2017, an English-language Chinese animated television series titled Stitch & Ai aired in China, featuring a local girl named Wang Ai Ling instead of Lilo and set in the Huangshan Mountains.

Unlike the anime, this series was originally produced in English in cooperation with American animators and then dubbed into Mandarin Chinese.