The Disney executives who made the choice to place a pause on some of their upcoming live-action remakes in the wake of Snow White‘s box office failure may be rethinking their strategy after Lilo & Stitch‘s record-breaking financial success. Over Memorial Day weekend, Dean Fleischer Camp‘s reimagining of the 2002 animated buddy comedy about the bond between a young Hawaiian girl and a rambunctious blue alien earned more than $190 million domestically, setting the record for the four-day weekend’s biggest release ever. At the worldwide box office, the film has already grossed over $390 million.
This enormous win for Disney comes about a month and a half after Warner Bros. found similar success at the box office with the release of A Minecraft Movie. Currently the biggest Hollywood hit of the year, the video game adaptation is approaching the $1 billion mark globally, though it might fall just short. With all this money being spent, audiences are telling studios what kind of family films they are actually interested in watching. Let’s hope those studios are paying attention.
Hollywood Should Be More Selective With IP Adaptations and Lean Into More Recent Nostalgia
When kids across the country were standing on movie theater chairs and applauding the words “Chicken Jockey,” many were quick to credit A Minecraft Movie‘s success to the film’s clever meme-inspired marketing. And while juvenile internet trends were unquestionably a key factor, they don’t tell the whole story. Part of what got those kids interested in heading to the theater to watch Jason Momoa rock a bright pink leather jacket and shoulder-length hair in the first place was the fact that Minecraft is a piece of IP that millions of young people have an authentic relationship with. Being both beloved and extremely contemporary, the game that debuted in 2009 has legitimate cultural cache with today’s audiences. The same can be said for the original Lilo & Stitch film, which, in many ways, has only increased in popularity since its release.
The 2002 film saw respectable box office returns, earning just over $145 million domestically and $270 million worldwide. Though these numbers themselves don’t scream for a remake to be made, a big reason why one was greenlit is because of the demand for Lilo and her alien companion on Disney+. According to Deadline, the entire Lilo & Stitch catalog, which includes multiple direct-to-video sequels and spinoffs as well as a television series, has been viewed for over half a billion hours on the streaming service. Moreover, merchandise based on the franchise reportedly generated over $1 billion in retail sales in 2024 alone.
While it’s difficult to accurately assess what is responsible for all that growth and popularity, it stands to reason that Lilo & Stitch‘s ability to tap into millennial nostalgia played a significant role. Coming out just 23 years ago, the film has remained an object of affection for the generation who have recently become new parents while maintaining a modern enough sensibility to appeal to their kids as well. This is the tightrope Hollywood needs to walk when rebooting old IP. The original has to have come out long enough ago that there’s been time for nostalgia to form, but not so long that people have forgotten why they fell in love with it in the first place.
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The Live-Action ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Does This Better Than the Animated Original
This change was definitely an improvement.
Some of the same factors that made Lilo & Stitch a hit also helped ’90s-era updates like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin become three of the four highest-grossing Disney live-action remakes. When comparing the success of those films to the relative financial failure of projects based on much older movies, like 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns, 2019’s Dumbo, and the aforementioned Snow White, it’s clear that audiences are looking for more current IP that feels fresh rather than outdated. As Fandango’s director of movie analytics, Shawn Robbins, put it, “Lilo & Stitch is more proof that turn-of-the-century nostalgia is having a moment.” There are certainly exceptions to the rule—notably, 2016’s The Jungle Book was a major box office success, while remakes of Mulan and The Little Mermaid underperformed expectations. But the idea that studios are better off trying to figure out which tales from 20 years ago are due for a retread—instead of retelling the same 100-year-old stories we’ve seen many times before—just makes sense. At the very least, the former doesn’t come with the same potentially controversial conversations about modernizing outmoded material that Snow White did.
‘A Minecraft Movie’ and ‘Lilo & Stitch’ are Proof that PG Films Rule the Box Office
Though one might think family fare would struggle at movie theaters in the age of streaming services and social media, the opposite has proven to be true. Not only are A Minecraft Movie and Lilo & Stitch two of the biggest success stories of the year, but four of the top five 2024 box office earners—Inside Out 2, Wicked, Moana 2, and Despicable Me 4—were rated PG. Hollywood pumping out more family-friendly pictures doesn’t just create the opportunity for more of these hits; it acts as a form of free advertising for movie theater owners. Assuredly, some of the youngsters who convinced their parents to take them to Lilo & Stitch over the weekend were first introduced to the film’s trailer at a screening of A Minecraft Movie.
Throughout the history of moviegoing, families have been an important demographic for cinemas to go after. For as much as Hollywood is constantly changing and attempting to adapt to perceived audience desires, kids can not be forgotten about. We may all yearn for more well-made dramas for adults to return to the big screen, but a healthy theater industry relies on the making of blockbuster movies that anyone from the ages of eight to 88 can go see.
- Release Date
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May 21, 2025
- Runtime
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108 Minutes
- Director
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Dean Fleischer Camp
- Writers
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Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes, Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
- Producers
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Tom C. Peitzman, Dan Lin, Ryan Halprin
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Chris Sanders
Stitch (voice)
