Lilo & Stitch is getting a live-action remake from Disney
By Rachel Roth
The beloved animated feature about a young girl and her alien friend she thinks is a dog is the latest to get the live-action treatment from Disney.
It was only a matter of time before Disney pulled Lilo & Stitch out of their vault to re-imagine with CGI and no voice actors. They’ve done a good job adapting their old classics, but let’s face it, Lilo & Stitch would be the weirdest Disney remake yet. The Oscar-nominated 2002 film is beloved by fans and a favorite among Millennials who grew up wishing they had a dog like Stitch.
Set in Hawaii, it told the story of Stitch/Experiment #626, an extraterrestrial genetic experiment who escapes his captors and falls to Earth. There, he gets hit by a car and sent to a pound where he’s adopted by a lonely girl named Lilo who is being raised by her older sister, Nani.
Though it didn’t gross as much money as other hit Disney movies, making $273 million at the global box office, more than The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire which came out around the same time, but it couldn’t match the success of The Lion King, Mulan, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas or even The Hunchback of Notre Dame. However, as the fan base grew, the movie eventually got multiple direct-to-video sequels, TV series and three official video games.
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I’m not surprised they picked Lilo & Stitch for a live-action remake, it’s just that I expected it to come after Pocahontas or at least another Peter Pan movie, and I kind of wished they picked Emperor’s New Groove to redue instead.
Picking Stitch seems a little random because it’s not that old, only sixteen years, and it’s one of their least dated films. All their other remakes came from the nineties or earlier.
Disney has hired screenwriter Mike Van Waes to write the script, whose is currently working on The Crooked Man horror film, and it’s being produced by the same men backing the new Aladdin, Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich. There is no director or cast yet.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney is planning on the remake to be a live-action/CGI hybrid and it’s not totally clear yet if the movie will be released in theaters or via streaming service (please no streaming service). Remakes of The Sword in the Stone and Lady and the Tramp are already scheduled to air through Disney’s upcoming streaming service that’ll be up and running in Fall 2019 and Lilo & Stitch might join them strictly because of its small-fry status when compared to Disney’s monster house films.
Whatever happens in Lilo & Stitch, let’s hope what happened with 2015’s Aloha doesn’t repeat itself.