Stitch strikes again.
“WE ALL RELATE less to the princess and more to the tiny whirlwind-of-disaster goblin that Stitch is.” Dean Fleischer Camp, director of the upcoming live-action Lilo & Stitch remake, is a longstanding fan of the stowaway alien star of the 2002 original. And he’s far from alone. The latest trailer for the new film —which again sees Stitch crash-land in Hawaii and form a found family with two orphaned sisters —hit 158 million views on social media in 24 hours, which are big numbers for a live-action-remake preview. Then there’s the social-media frenzy sparked by the character’s return, from fans creating ‘Stitchcore’ videos —montages of the lively critter’s craziest moments —to documenting “vintage” merchandise from the animated film on TikTok. “People never forget how much they love Stitch,” says the director.
Fleischer Camp, whose 2021 stop-motion charmer Marcel The Shell With Shoes On scored an Oscar nomination, wanted to preserve the relatable chaos of his fuzzy protagonist but with some recalibration for a new era. “Stitch is kind of a dick for the first half of the [animated] movie,” he laughs, referring to Stitch’s frantic mission to escape the fellow aliens hunting him down on Earth. “If you re-watch the original, he is literally just using Lilo as a human meat-shield for the first half.”