Live Action Lilo & Stitch Trailer Finally Drops (With Two Major Character Design Changes)

The trailer for Disney’s Lilo & Stitch remake dropped on Wednesday morning, though it’s hard to call this one “live-action.” The movie employs actors and actresses to play the human characters, but aliens like Stitch are CGI-animated, along with the big action scenes and the outer space settings. It’s clear that a lot of animation work went into this production, and hopefully the final result can intrigue some new fans. Lilo & Stitch hits theaters on Memorial Day weekend — May 23rd, 2025 — so this trailer comes just in the nick of time. Commenters are clearly a little worn out by these “live-action” remakes, but they didn’t have any major complaints about this first look.

The Lilo & Stitch remake has been on Disney’s slate for a long time now, and fans have been surprised by the muted ad campaign for the movie so far. Many expected a trailer during the Super Bowl, but Disney seems to have downplayed its presence at that event. Now, the trailer comes when we were least expecting it, but it hasn’t failed to garner attention.

The remake features Chris Sanders reprising his role as the voice of Stitch. Sanders created the character, and wrote the story for the original 2002 film — sharing writing and directorial credit with Dean DeBlois. Stitch’s companion Lilo is played by Maia Kealoha, while Lilo’s older sister Nani is played by Sydney Agudong. The actress who originally voiced Nani, Tia Carrere, returns in live-action here to play a social worker checking up on Nani’s guardianship of Lilo. However, the gruff social worker Cobra Bubbles is also back on the case, this time played by Courtney B. Vance.

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The biggest changes we can see in this trailer are the extraterrestrials Dr. Jumba Jookiba and Agent Pleakley. Jookiba is played by Zach Galifianakis and Pleakley is played by Billy Magnussen, and it looks like their disguises will be a little more thorough this time while they’re on earth. The two will assume human forms through some kind of technology, blending in more believably than the original. This means fans may see less of their unique character designs than before.

Disney’s live-action CGI remakes of its animated classics have been some of the studio’s biggest projects of the last decade, and it looks like it will stay that way for quite some time. This spring alone we’re getting Snow White on March 21st followed quickly by Lilo & Stitch, with a live-action Moana following in July of 2026. After that, the slate includes Hercules, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, Bambi, and Tangled, though none of those have release dates yet.

For the most part, these movies have been commercially successful with no particularly great critical acclaim. There’s a lot of variance in that generalization — Mulan was released straight to streaming, for example, while Cruella and The Little Mermaid hardly made back double their budgets. Critics may pick out a favorite, but in general most agree that this new medium is not adding much to these stories.

Lilo & Stitch may be poised to bring something new to the table, but either way it definitely looks like a great excuse to get out on a holiday weekend. It hits theaters on May 23rd, 2025. The original animated movie is streaming now on Disney+.