Lilo & Stitch

A 1985 concept sketch of Stitch by the character's creator, Chris Sanders

Production of Lilo & Stitch began with then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner deciding that, in the wake of a number of high-profile and large-budget Disney animated features during the mid-1990s, the studio might try its hand at a smaller and less expensive film.[6] The idea was inspired by the production of Dumbo, an economically-made 1941 Walt Disney film produced in the wake of the more expensive Pinocchio and Fantasia. Chris Sanders, a head storyboard artist at Disney Feature Animation, was approached to pitch an idea. Sanders had created the character of Stitch in 1985 for an unsuccessful children's book pitch and had to now develop a concept that featured the character in an animated film.[6] The storyline required a remote, non-urban location, so the movie was originally intended to take place in Kansas.[7] Sanders's decision to change the film's setting to the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi was an important choice in defining the plot more clearly. No other animated feature had ever taken place on any of the Hawaiian islands before.[7] In Sanders's words:

Animation has been set so much in ancient, medieval Europe — so many fairy tales find their roots there, that to place it in Hawaiʻi was kind of a big leap. But that choice went to color the entire movie, and rewrite the story for us.

Dean DeBlois, who had served as "story co-head" in Mulan (1998), was brought on to co-write and co-direct Lilo & Stitch, while Disney executive Clark Spencer was assigned to produce. Unlike several previous and concurrent Disney Feature Animation productions, the film's pre-production team remained relatively small and isolated from upper management until the film went into full production.[8] The character and set designs were based upon Sanders's personal artistic style.[6]

While the animation team visited Kauaʻi to research the locale, their tour guide explained the meaning of ʻohana as it applies to extended families. This concept of ʻohana became an important part of the movie. DeBlois recalls:

No matter where we went, our tour guide seemed to know somebody. He was really the one who explained to us the Hawaiian concept of ʻohana, a sense of family that extends far beyond your immediate relatives. That idea so influenced the story that it became the foundation theme, the thing that causes Stitch to evolve despite what he was created to do, which is destroy.

The island of Kauaʻi had also been featured in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and those from the Jurassic Park trilogy. The Disney animators faced the daunting task of meshing the film's plot, which showed the impoverished and dysfunctional life that many Hawaiians lived during the then-recent economic downturn, with the island's serene beauty. The actors voicing the film's young adults, Nani and David, were Tia Carrere, a local of Honolulu, and Jason Scott Lee, who is of Hawaiian descent and was raised in Hawaii. The voice actors assisted with rewriting the Hawaiian characters' dialogue in the proper colloquial dialect, and also with the task of adding Hawaiian slang terms.[9]

One innovative and unique aspect of the film is its strong focus on the relationship between two sisters: Lilo and Nani. Making the relationship between sisters into a major plot element is very rare in American animated films.[10]^: 13

In a deviation from several decades' worth of Disney features, Sanders and DeBlois chose to use watercolor painted backgrounds for Lilo & Stitch, as opposed to the traditional gouache technique.[6] While watercolors had been used for the early Disney animated shorts, as well as the early Disney features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Dumbo (1941), the technique had been largely abandoned by the mid-1940s in favor of less complicated media such as gouache. Sanders preferred that watercolors be used for Lilo & Stitch to evoke both the bright look of a storybook and the art direction of Dumbo, requiring the background artists to be trained in working with the medium.[6]

The animation itself was all based on 2D work as the budget lacked funds to incorporate computer generated imagery.[11] The character designs were based around Sanders's personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style.[6] Because of the limited budget, details like pockets or designs on clothing were avoided in the animation process, and as they could not afford to do shadows throughout much of the film, many of the scenes took place in shaded areas, saving the use of shadows for more pivotal scenes.[11]

The film's extraterrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs.[12] One planned scene in the film involved Stitch hijacking a Boeing 747 airliner and piloting it in a cartoonish manner through a city. However, following the September 11 attacks with only a few weeks left in production, this scene was revamped at a large cost to have Stitch steal Jumba and Pleakley's alien craft instead, revamping the airliner's design to look like an alien spacecraft, though the final design still has engines that resembled the 747's jet engines, according to Sanders.[11]

Even after this adjustment, the team had enough budget for about two additional minutes of animation, which was used to create the epilogue montage of Lilo, Nani, and Stitch becoming a new family.[11]

Teaser trailers for the film parody trailers for other Disney films (three of which Sanders previously worked on) from the Disney Renaissance: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. These are called "Inter-Stitch-als" and are featured on Disney's official site as well as on the film's respective DVD release. The original actors were brought back to reprise their roles and were shocked when asked to act negatively towards Stitch. The trailers also include the AC/DC song track "Back in Black." In the United Kingdom, Lilo & Stitch trailers and TV ads featured a cover of Elvis' song "Suspicious Minds", performed by Gareth Gates, who became famous on the UK TV program Pop Idol. In the US, "Hound Dog" was used for both theatrical and TV trailers. The marketing campaign presented Stitch as the sort of "Disney Family Black Sheep". As a promotional campaign, comics of Lilo & Stitch were run in Disney Adventures prior to the film's release. The comics detailed events leading up to the film for both title characters, including the creation and escape of Stitch. These events were later contradicted by the sequel Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, rendering the comics non-canonical, but is notable to the series as introducing Experiment 625, Reuben, who was made a main character in the subsequent movies and TV series. Most of the comic series have been released as a collective volume titled Comic Zone Volume 1: Lilo & Stitch.

Several major elements of the film changed during production. Originally, Stitch was the leader of an intergalactic gang, and Jumba was one of his former cronies summoned by the Intergalactic Council to capture Stitch.[6] Test audience response to early versions of the film resulted in the change of Stitch and Jumba's relationship to that of creation and creator, respectively.[6]

The biggest change came to the film's third act, which had Stitch, Nani, Jumba, and Pleakley hijacking a Boeing 747 jet from Lihue Airport to save Lilo; the scene had the quartet chasing Gantu through downtown Honolulu, scraping against buildings and coming dangerously close to the ground. After the terrorist attacks occurred on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the film's climax was completely reworked so that they instead flew Jumba's spaceship through the mountains of Kauaʻi.[13][14] This revision was done primarily by replacing the CGI model of the 747 with that of Jumba's spaceship, with only a few shots in the sequence fully re-animated.[6]

The original scene (top) and the one used in the release (bottom). The Boeing 747 and the spaceship are both flying in a sideways position.

Another scene that was deleted was one of Lilo's attempts to make Stitch into a model citizen by notifying tourists on the beach about the tsunami warning sirens, which she knows are being tested that day. The original version of Jumba attacking Stitch in Lilo's home was found to be too violent by test audiences and was revised to make it more comedic. There was also a scene in which Lilo introduces Stitch to Pudge the fish, which ultimately leads to the fish's death. Lilo then takes Pudge's body to the same graveyard where her parents were buried, and thus Stitch learns the consequences of his actions and gains a better understanding of mortality.

A scene was removed where Nani brings Lilo pizza and then Lilo tells herself a bedtime story about a friendly and stinky bear named Toaster. It was replaced with the scene where Lilo and Nani talk about being family because test audiences had mistaken Nani for Lilo's mother. The trial scene originally had Stitch as the defendant, and Jumba is not present. This was changed because the film directors thought the Intergalactic Council had to blame him for creating Stitch.

Lilo & Stitch opened in second place with $35.3 million in its first weekend, less than $500,000 behind Minority Report.[15] In its second week, it fell to third, again behind the Steven Spielberg film coming in second after Mr. Deeds. As soon as Men in Black II was released, Lilo & Stitch stayed in third place.[16] Despite this, the film continued to draw in families while other major summer blockbusters like Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones ruled the box office. Additionally, it would go on to compete against the Warner Bros. live-action/computer-animated hybrid film Scooby-Doo.[17] The film earned $145.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $127.3 million internationally, totaling $273.1 million globally.[1] It was the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2002, behind 20th Century Fox's Ice Age. They were the only two animated films to approach the $100 million mark that year.[18] Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 25 million tickets during its original run.[1]

Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film has an approval rating of 87% based on 149 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Edgier than traditional Disney fare, Lilo and Stitch explores issues of family while providing a fun and charming story."[19] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[20] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[21]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and wrote "It's one of the most charming feature-length cartoons of recent years—funny, sassy, startling, original and with six songs by Elvis".[22] The film's success spawned a Lilo & Stitch franchise, with three sequel films and three television series. This film has more Elvis Presley performed songs in it than any other film, including films that Presley himself was in.[23]

Peter M. Nichols states that through the character of Nani and her struggles, the film appeals to older children better than such attempts by the studio to do so as The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.[24]

Lilo & Stitch was released on VHS and DVD on December 3, 2002. During the first day of release, more than 3 million DVD copies were sold.[25] This THX certified DVD release features a variety of bonus features, such as a Build An Alien Experiment game, audio commentary, music videos, deleted scenes, teaser trailers and DVD-ROM.[26] In 2003, a 2-disc DVD version was announced to come out along with Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Pocahontas (1995), which were released in 2004 and 2005. A 2-Disc Special Edition DVD of Lilo & Stitch was released in the UK on August 22, 2005, along with the UK release of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005), but a release in the US was affected by many delays. On March 24, 2009, Disney finally released the special edition DVD, which is called a 2-Disc "Big Wave Edition". This new DVD has everything that the original DVD had and adds an audio commentary, a 2-hour documentary, more deleted scenes, a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, and some games. On June 11, 2013, Lilo & Stitch was released on Blu-ray alongside Lilo & Stitch 2 in a "2-Movie Collection".[27]

A scene was modified for the UK home video release.[28] In the original, Lilo hid in a clothes dryer, which was changed to a commode with a cabinet and pizza box used as a "door" to avoid influencing children to hide in dryers.[29] The UK edit was later used for the film's Disney+ release.[29]

On August 26, 2003, Disney released a direct-to-video sequel, Stitch! The Movie, which served as the pilot to a television series titled Lilo & Stitch: The Series. This series ran for 65 episodes between September 20, 2003, and July 29, 2006. The series carried on where the film left off and charted Lilo and Stitch's efforts to capture and rehabilitate Jumba's remaining experiments. The series, as well as the original parts of the franchise that focused on Lilo Pelekai and were set in Hawaii, ended with the television film Leroy & Stitch, which aired on June 23, 2006.

On August 30, 2005, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, another direct-to-video sequel to the film, was released. In this film (set between Lilo & Stitch and Stitch! The Movie), Stitch has a glitch because his molecules were never fully charged (this is contrary to an alternate opening, "Stitch's trial", which was seen on the DVD release of Lilo & Stitch). Lilo wants to win the May Day hula contest like her mother did in the 1970s, but Stitch continues to have outbursts. Lilo gets increasingly mad at Stitch as his glitch causes more problems for her and ruins her chances of winning the competition. She thinks Stitch is not cooperating properly, until she finds out that Stitch is dying. The Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch DVD also contained a short film, The Origin of Stitch, that served as a bridge between Stitch Has a Glitch and Stitch! The Movie.

In March 2008, Disney announced an anime based on the Lilo & Stitch franchise aimed at the Japanese market titled Stitch!. The anime, which ran as a series from October 2008 to March 2011, features a Japanese girl named Yuna Kamihara in place of Lilo, and is set on a fictional island in Okinawa Prefecture instead of Hawaii. This series was produced by Madhouse for its first two seasons, and Shin-Ei Animation for its third season and two post-series specials in 2012 and 2015.

From March 27 to April 6, 2017, an English-language Chinese animated television series based on the franchise titled Stitch & Ai aired in China with a Mandarin Chinese dub. It was produced by Anhui Xinhua Media and Panimation Hwakai Media. Like with the Stitch! anime, it features a local girl named Wang Ai Ling instead of Lilo, and is set in the Huangshan mountains. Unlike Stitch!, however, this series was originally produced in English in co-operation with American animators (including those who worked on Lilo & Stitch: The Series) and then dubbed into Mandarin Chinese; the original English production aired in Southeast Asia during February 2018.

On October 3, 2018, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Walt Disney Pictures is developing a live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch. It was also announced that the film would be produced by Aladdin producers Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich and written by Mike Van Waes.[41] On February 4, 2020, it was reported that the remake will be released on Disney's streaming service, Disney+, and that Chris Sanders would reprise his role as the voice of Stitch. Filming was reportedly supposed to take place in Hawaii beginning in late 2020.[42] However, on November 13, 2020, it was reported that Jon M. Chu entered talks to direct the film and that it was no longer clear if the film would be released in theaters or on Disney+.[43] In May 2021, it was reported that Chu had left the film due to his involvement with other projects such as the film adaptation of Wicked and the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians.[44] In July 2022, it was announced that Dean Fleischer-Camp (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) would replace Chu as the film's director.[45]