The box office is horribly sluggish but there is a silver lining in summer, evident in Disney‘s live-action take of 2002 animation toon Lilo & Stitch which opens on May 23. How’s that? The 24-hour traffic for the trailer that dropped this week clocked 158M views, making it the second most viewed Disney live-action trailer of all time, behind only 2019’s The Lion King teaser trailer.
Within an hour of release, Lilo & Stitch reached the No. 1 spot for trending on Twitter/X and remained in the top 10 for the hours following. The trailer also trended on YouTube, taking the No. 1 spot following release and even reached No. 1 on China’s Douyin platform.
A small glimpse of the movie was revealed at Disney’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event last August. Then, during this year’s Super Bowl game, a spot featuring Stitch “crashing” the field generated 173.1M views in 24 hours, making it Disney’s most viewed spot digitally.
Lilo & Stitch tells the wildly funny and touching story of a lonely Hawaiian girl and the fugitive alien who helps to mend her broken family.
Pic is directed by award-winning filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp, with a screenplay by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, and stars Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Billy Magnussen, Tia Carrere, Hannah Waddingham, Chris Sanders, with Courtney B. Vance, and Zach Galifianakis, and introducing Maia Kealoha. Lilo & Stitch is produced by Jonathan Eirich, Dan Lin, with Tom Peitzman, Ryan Halprin, Louie Provost, Thomas Schumacher serving as EPs.
The original movie grossed $145.7M domestic, $273.1M worldwide at the box office. The movie opened to $35.2M at the domestic box office.
Disney fires off summer on May 2 with Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts*.