Disney's live-action Lilo & Stitch gets a 2025 release date as the cuddly, goblin-mode alien scrabbles toward cinemas (2025)

Everyone’s favorite furry, blue alien is getting ready to make his live-action debut in theaters when Disney’s arrives on May 23, 2025! Brazenly, that Memorial Day weekend is the same release window for Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible movie with Tom Cruise. While Lilo & Stitch targets parents and children, Mission: Impossible aims to please older male audiences, creating a divided but competitive box office face-off. Disney announced the release date for Lilo & Stitch alongside a date for its Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis-led sequel, Freakier Friday.

Disney‘s live-action Lilo & Stitch stars Maia Kealoha as Lilo in reimagining the mouse-eared studio’s 2002 animated classic. Other players include Zach Galifianakis, Billy Magnussen, Tia Carrere, Courtney B. Vance, Sydney Agudong, and Chris Sanders as the voice of Stitch. The plot focuses on a young, parentless girl who adopts a “dog” from the local pound, utterly unaware that it’s supposedly a dangerous scientific experiment that’s taken refuge on Earth and is now hiding from its creator and those who see it as a menace.

Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) directs Lilo & Stitch from a script by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, based on a previous draft by Mike Van Wess. Disney announced the studio’s live-action Lilo & Stitch in February 2018, but footage of Stitch bursting through the film’s logo debuted at 2024’s D23 conference. Lilo & Stitch joins the studio’s long list of live-action remakes after adaptations like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, Dumbo, Mulan, and The Little Mermaid. Disney won’t stop there, of course. Live-action versions of Bambi, Peter Pan, and Moana are also in the works, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui for Moana.

Disney’s Snow White, starring Rachel Zigler as the studio’s first princess, arrives in theaters on March 21, 2025. Gal Gadot also stars as the Evil Queen, with Ansu Kabia as the Hunstman and Andrew Burnap as Jonathan. Reactions to the film’s first trailer have not been kind, with many repulsed by the look of the film’s lovable Dwarves.

What other animated Disney movies could get a live-action remake? Atlantis: The Lost Empire? The Sword in the Stone (don’t you dare, Disney)? Tangled? Tarzan? The list goes on. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He's also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You'll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.