Lilo & Stitch has taken just a few days to entirely outdo the original movie. The new Disney movie is a live-action remake of their 2002 animated movie of the same name and has the same basic plot: young orphaned girl Lilo (Maia Kealoha) befriends an escaped extraterrestrial genetic experiment named Stitch (Chris Sanders) when he crash lands in Hawai’i. Critics’ Lilo & Stitch reviews have been middling to positive, earning it a Rotten Tomatoes score of 69% compared to the original’s 86%, but audiences have given it a much stronger score of 94%, which is Verified Hot by the platform.
Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Lilo & Stitch is expected to close out its opening weekend with a whopping worldwide box office gross of $341.7 million. This total comes from a $158.7 million haul coming in from international markets, added to its projected $183 million 4-day Memorial Day weekend gross in domestic theaters. In addition to the movie’s domestic total earning it the biggest Memorial Day debut of all time in North America, this worldwide total means that it has taken mere days to outgross the entire run of the original 2002 movie, which only made $273.1 million worldwide.
What This Means For Lilo & Stitch
The Movie Seems Set To Be A Major Hit
In addition to outperforming the original movie, the Lilo & Stitch release is comparing extremely favorably to other Disney live-action remakes. In addition to outgrossing the entire run of Disney’s 2025 box office disappointment Snow White (which has only grossed $204.9 million at the time of writing against a reported budget of roughly $270 million), its 3-day opening weekend of $145.5 million sees it landing between the debuts of the billion-dollar movies Alice in Wonderland and Beauty and the Beast. Below, see a breakdown of the 3-day opening weekends of Disney’s major live-action remakes:
|
Disney Live-Action Remake |
Opening Weekend Box Office |
|---|---|
|
The Lion King (2019) |
$191.7 million |
|
Beauty and the Beast (2017) |
$174.7 million |
|
Lilo & Stitch (2025) |
$145.5 million |
|
Alice in Wonderland (2010) |
$116.1 million |
|
The Jungle Book (2016) |
$103.2 million |
|
The Little Mermaid (2023) |
$95.5 million |
|
Aladdin (2019) |
$91.5 million |
|
Maleficent (2014) |
$69.4 million |
|
Cinderella (2015) |
$67.8 million |
|
Dumbo (2019) |
$45.9 million |
|
Snow White (2025) |
$42.2 million |
The movie is also well on its way toward earning a profit. The reported budget of Lilo & Stitch is $100 million and its advertising reportedly cost an additional $100 million. Because theaters keep half of ticket sales, this most likely means that the movie needs to gross $400 million worldwide in order to break even. While it has not quite hit that milestone yet, it could potentially reach it by the end of its first full week in theaters, at which point it will be turning out pure profit from there on out.
Our Take On The Lilo & Stitch Global Debut
Its Box Office Success Could Be A First For Hollywood In 2025
Unless it immediately experiences a huge crash during its second weekend in theaters, Lilo & Stitch seems destined to earn far more than $1 billion worldwide. That would most likely make it only the second billion-dollar movie of the year after the Chinese animated smash Ne Zha 2. While the viral hit A Minecraft Movie seemed like it might hit that milestone, it is currently slowing down during its eighth weekend and is expected to fall just short of that goal, allowing Stitch to potentially become the first billion-dollar Hollywood movie of the year.
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Source: Variety
Lilo & Stitch
7/10
- Release Date
-
May 21, 2025
- Runtime
-
108 Minutes
- Director
-
Dean Fleischer Camp
- Writers
-
Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes, Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
- Producers
-
Tom C. Peitzman, Dan Lin, Ryan Halprin
-
-
Chris Sanders
Stitch (voice)
