Development On October 3, 2018, it was announced that
Walt Disney Pictures was developing a live-action/computer-generated animation hybrid film remake of Disney's 2002 animated feature film
Lilo & Stitch. The film was set to be adapted by Mike Van Waes, produced by Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich, and co-produced by Ryan Halprin. On October 24, 2018, Van Waes revealed that he began to work on the remake's script. On November 13, 2020,
Jon M. Chu entered talks to direct the film, while Van Waes was reported to have left the project, with the studio looking for a new screenwriter to re-write Van Waes's script, though Chu would ultimately not direct the film due to other obligations. On July 14, 2022,
Deadline Hollywood reported that Dean Fleischer Camp was chosen to direct instead, while Chris Kekaniokalani Bright was in talks to rewrite the script; Bright was fully confirmed to be the writer in February 2023. this was later confirmed by the
Writers Guild of America West listing both Bright and Van Waes as the film's screenwriters.
Casting Since the announcement of the film's development, it was speculated that the original film's co-writer/co-director,
Chris Sanders, would reprise his role as the voice of
Stitch in the remake. Sanders stated in a September 2022 interview that
Disney had not yet approached him on reprising the role at the time, although he would be open to returning to voice his creation. It was reported in November 2022 that a
casting call had been issued for the film. In February 2023,
Zach Galifianakis joined the cast in a then-unspecified role. While
TheWrap reported at the time that he would voice Pleakley,
The Hollywood Reporter wrote in April 2023 that Galifianakis had officially signed on to be voicing Dr. Jumba Jookiba. In April 2023,
Billy Magnussen was cast as the voice of Agent Pleakley, Later that month, Kahiau Machado was cast as
David Kawena, Sanders ultimately did five voice recording sessions late into production, with each session lasting about four hours. He explained in a February 2025 interview that his "Stitch voice" is difficult to maintain for such a long period each time.
Sydney Agudong is a
mixed-race woman born and raised on Kauai (where
the franchise is mainly set) to a
Caucasian mother and a father who is
Filipino and
Hawaiian. After Internet users discovered that Machado previously used a racial slur on his
Spotify and Instagram accounts, Disney recast him with
Kaipo Dudoit. Machado later posted an apology for his prior use of the slur via Instagram on April 27, 2023. In May 2025, it was revealed that the original film's main antagonist
Gantu, the corrupt captain of the United Galactic Federation's armada, was cut from the film. Shortly after the film's release, Fleischer Camp and Eirich revealed to
Entertainment Weekly that Gantu was in the original scripts of the film, but the former advocated for the character's removal and shifting the antagonist role to Jumba. Fleischer Camp believed that Gantu's arrival on Earth in the original film turned it into "a more conventional movie", while making Jumba the villain added a "personal connection" to the live-action film's story, as Fleischer Camp saw him as a "terrible delinquent father figure" for Stitch, saying, "You want your main antagonist to also be the representative of the theme of the film. It seemed like an opportunity to do that as opposed to just there's a big bad boss that comes down and is shooting lasers at everyone." On June 12, 2025, almost three weeks after the film's release, David Hekili Kenui Bell, who played the "Big Hawaiian Dude", died at age 46.
Lilo & Stitch was Bell's film debut; Bell previously played minor characters in the television series
Hawaii Five-0 (2010–2020) and
Magnum P.I. (2018–2024). He vaguely alluded to "boring logistical reasons" for why the film could not be shot on location on the island of Kauai; instead, it was filmed on the island of
Oahu. and finish on June 16. However, the first day of filming was delayed until April 17. The trailer contained costumes that would have been used for the first three weeks of filming. The fire started before 11 pm
HST and was extinguished by 1 am the following day. The Pelekai house was a temporary structure built at
Kualoa Ranch in an area where some of the ranch managers live. Filming was suspended in July due to the
2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. It eventually resumed in February 2024 and finally wrapped in early March that year.
Visual effects and design The visual effects were provided by Disney-owned
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).
Craig Hammack served as visual effects supervisor; according to Hammack, he first became involved in "serious discussions about the project in the fall of 2022". Additional visual effects were provided by
Luma Pictures,
Moving Picture Company (MPC),
Sony Pictures Imageworks, Untold Studios,
Crafty Apes, Atomic Arts and Cantina Creative. Early on, to ensure strong on-screen chemistry between the child actress playing Lilo (who had not yet been cast) and the computer-generated Stitch character, ILM decided to employ animatronic puppets as stand-ins for Stitch on set. ILM hired
Legacy Effects to build several puppet versions of Stitch, including a version suitable for underwater scenes. The puppets never appear on screen in the finished film; they were created only to provide the cast members with a "physical scene partner" capable of eliciting appropriate emotional reactions. This method resulted in a lot of "messy plate cleanup" for the visual effects artists (in terms of carefully erasing the puppets from the raw footage). However, it was deemed to be worth the cost because of the risk of getting "stale" performances otherwise if the cast had been asked to react to an entirely imaginary Stitch. Legacy Effects sent puppeteer Seth Hayes to Hawaii to operate the puppets on set. For some scenes in which Lilo initially mistakes Stitch for a dog, a
French Bulldog named Dale played Stitch. In post-production, the puppet and dog stand-ins for Stitch were replaced by ILM with a CGI Stitch. There are 1,673 visual effects shots in the final cut of the film. Originally, ILM was planning to do the majority of the visual effects work itself, but then had to bring in additional vendors as the complexity of the project became clear. One reason for the large number of vendors is that MPC suddenly went into
administration just six weeks before the deadline for delivering their work, and ILM had to scramble to find other companies who could finish MPC's shots on short notice. The animators working on the 3D version of Stitch tried to capture the "essence" of the original 2D animated version and "make him fit convincingly" into the real world. The "biggest discrepancy" never explained in the film is that Stitch is supposed to be very heavy, yet Lilo is able to pick him up. The animators were trying to avoid a
shot-for-shot remake, but did closely follow the look of certain shots in the original film for several iconic moments. ==Soundtrack==