‘Lilo & Stitch’ Mega Box Office Hit Reaffirms Disney’s Live-Action Remake Strategy

Irony of ironies: in a year when the Hollywood majors are taking a break from releasing fully-animated theatrical films, one of the biggest film openings of the year is a remake of a theatrical animated film.

Dean Fleischer Camp’s hybrid live-action/cg-animation Lilo & Stitch, a remake of Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders’ 2002 hand-drawn Disney film of the same name, launched over the extended Memorial Day holiday weekend with an estimated $145.5 million over the traditional three-day weekend, and around $175-180m through Monday. The success of the film is being driven largely by Latino and Hispanic moviegoers who represent 41% of the total box office, per Posttrak.

It’s the biggest Memorial Day launch ever for a film, topping 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, which opened with $160.5m. To put the launch into perspective, the three-day total of the remake is roughly equal to the entire domestic box office gross of the original film, which wrapped up its run 23 years ago with $145.7m.

Lilo & Stitch scored an additional $158.7m from international box office, lifting its worldwide debut to somewhere in the $330-340m range. Latino audiences led the way internationally as well, with Mexico the top market abroad at $23.7m and no. 1 launches in all other Latin American markets. The rest of the international top five is rounded out by U.K. ($12.9m), Brazil ($11.1m), France ($10.7m), and Italy ($9.2m).

Lilo & Stitch was produced for a relatively modest $100 million by Rideback, the company founded by Dan Lin, who is currently head of film at Netflix. Rideback is aggressively exploring the possibilities of AI animation and its spinoff AI startup Cheehoo recently raised $10 million in venture capital.