Lilo & Stitch just became one of the most successful live-action Disney movie remakes with a worldwide box office haul of $914 million, and counting. So when the House of Mouse made the announcement that a sequel is officially in the works on Stitch day (6/26, get it?) I wasn’t at all surprised. But, I am curious about two big things regarding how Lilo & Stitch 2 will be handled as a longtime fan.
Stitch and his lil pink hot rod helped announce the news that Lilo & Stitch 2 is “now in development” at Walt Disney Studios with this sweet post. Check it out:
In the Twitter video, Stitch struts into Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, to cause a ruckus, drifting and such across the lots to spell out Lilo & Stitch 2. He yelled out a big “Here we go!” as he did it, and it felt like the best way for the company to announce this project. However, it’s also rather vague. We assume a lot of the cast of the original will be back, but we have no idea what creative minds are behind it this time around.
Will the director behind the live-action Lilo & Stitch, Dean Fleischer Camp, be involved? Between the movie’s positive buzz, including through our own Lilo & Stitch review, and the filmmakers dealing with quite a bit of backlash from fans, I think it could go either way.
However, there are two other questions that I’m really focused on.
That brings me to my questions. For one, I’m curious if Lilo & Stitch 2 will adapt the actual second movie, which was Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has A Glitch, or Stitch! The Movie. All the Stitch follow-ups were direct-to-video and were more of TV movies than films. The official Lilo & Stitch 2 that came out in 2005 had Stitch reverting back to his programming, and his found family has to help him get back to normal.
However, two years before that movie, there was Stitch! The Movie, which showed the blue alien meeting a whole bunch of other experiments like him as they land in Hawaii. It also involved a lot more of Gantu and a rodent-like villain named Dr. Jacques von Hämsterviel, and I question whether that would work in live-action. Will one of these be adapted, or will the sequel be a completely original story?
If the live-action Lilo & Stitch’s key change was choosing not to have Gantu and making Jumba the main villain, I wonder if Zach Galifianakis’ version of the character will become more of the good guy he was in the animated movies. That would come in handy should Stitch have a glitch. While I found the remake to be similar to the original in a lot of ways, there were quite a few changes to the ending, from Jumba remaining villainous to Nani going to college in San Diego, California. And I imagine the filmmakers might be inspired to go in a completely different direction for this live-action sequel.
These are all questions I assume the creatives over at Disney are debating now as I write this. So, as we learn more about Lilo & Stitch 2, we’ll keep you posted.
