Chris Sanders – X-626/Stitch, X-629/Leroy (3rd film)
David Ogden Stiers – Dr. Jumba Jookiba
Kevin McDonald – Agent Wendy Pleakley
Tia Carrere – Nani Pelekai, Mrs. Edmonds
Jeff Bennett – Dr. Jacques von Hämsterviel
Kevin Michael Richardson – Captain Gantu, Cobra Bubbles, Officer Kahiko
Rob Paulsen – X-625/Reuben
After several high-profile animated
films were produced with massive budgets and saw diminishing returns at the box
office, animator and writer Chris Sanders encouraged Disney to look into
producing smaller films. Then-head of Walt Disney Feature Animation Thomas Schumacher
asked Sanders if he had any projects he wanted to work on, and Sanders showed
him a 1985 children’s book concept he ultimately abandoned due to its
inappropriate size and scope. It was about a strange creature surviving in the
woods among its animal inhabitants. Schumacher liked the idea but encouraged
Sanders to move the setting to the human world for a bigger contrast. Sanders
recruited his Mulan (1998)
co-writer Dean
DeBlois to help translate the idea to the screen and to serve
as co-director with him.
While Sanders took the suggestion to
set the story in the human world, he still wanted an isolated setting. He
initially figured on Kansas until a glance at a map made him realize just how
remote the Hawaiian Islands were. Working on Mulan had taught Sanders
and DeBlois that when dealing with a real location in fiction, there were
certain cultural considerations that needed to happen. As they were both
outsiders, they engaged with as many Hawaiians on the project as they could (including
two of the film’s stars, Hawaiian natives Tia Carrere and Jason Scott Lee,
who helped with colloquial dialect and slang in the dialogue) to ensure an
authenticity was maintained. When the animation team went to do research on the
island of Kauai,
they learned about the concept of ‘ohana:
a term used to describe an extended family that goes beyond blood relation.
Taken with the closeness of the community that lived there, ‘ohana soon became
an important part of the story and its driving theme.
The film, titled Lilo &
Stitch after its two main characters, followed two sisters on their own
after their parents’ deaths. The elder Nani Pelekai (Carrere) struggled to make
ends meet while also trying to take care of her rambunctious little sister,
Lilo (Daveigh Chase). That became even more complicated when Nani let Lilo
adopt a dog, Stitch (Sanders), who ended up being an alien creature created for
destruction by alien mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (David Ogden Stiers).
Jumba and his reluctant partner/keeper, Agent Wendy Pleakley (a so-called Earth
“expert”, voiced by Kevin McDonald), attempt to reclaim “Experiment 626” on
orders from the United Galactic
Federation. However, they only succeed in getting Nani fired and putting
her guardianship of Lilo in the crosshairs of social worker Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames).
When the giant militant Captain Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson) was sent to
succeed where Jumba failed, he ended up capturing Lilo and causing Nani and the
aliens to band together to get her back. The Grand
Councilwoman (Zoe Caldwell),
head of the Federation, came to Earth herself to take Stitch in, but ultimately
allowed him to remain with his new ‘ohana as they had managed to inspire a
change in Stitch’s programming for the better.
The production design defied every
Disney standard at the time. Instead of the house style used in other animated
projects, the character and set designs were based on Sanders’ own style through
Schumacher’s insistence. Visual supervisor Sue Nichols deconstructed
and analyzed his art and provided a breakdown to help the animators replicate
it in a book called Surfing
the Sanders Style. The backgrounds were to be painted in
watercolor—a process not used since 1941’s Dumbo,
necessitating
the animation staff having to learn the technique—to invoke the look of a
storybook. Rather than being made in the California-based Disney studio, the
film was animated at Walt
Disney Animation Florida located inside Walt Disney World.
Originally begun as a theme park attraction with park workers pretending to
animate, producer Max
Howard soon loaded it up with real animators producing
actual work. Sanders felt that the small studio allowed the animators to bond
and bring more of a family feel to the film. Additionally, there would be
little to no CGI used in the film as the small budget ($80 million) couldn’t
accommodate it, nor did Sanders feel his designs would work in 3D. The small
budget also meant things like shadows (a lot of the action took place in shade)
or elaborate clothing designs (shirt logos, pockets, etc.) had to go. The one
bit of CGI they did have was initially of a jet plane on a chase through
the city, which was hastily
changed to Jumba’s spaceship through the mountains in the
wake of the September
11
terrorist attacks.
Lilo & Stitch opened on
June 21, 2002 to largely positive reviews, earning $273.1 million at the box
office. The marketing campaign was inspired by Stitch’s quirkiness, having
Stitch intrude on memorable scenes from The Little Mermaid,
Aladdin,
Beauty
and the Beast, and The Lion King.
Jodi
Benson, Scott
Weinger, Paige
O’Hara and Nathan Lane
all reprised their respective roles from those films to interact with/react to
Stitch. These have become known as “Inter-Stitch-als” after the term “interstitial”.
With such a positive reception and
box office, Disney moved to continue
the franchise with both a sequel and an animated
series. The direct-to-video film was called Stitch! The Movie, releasing
on August 26, 2003 written by Bobs Gannaway
and Jess
Winfield and directed by Tony Craig
and Gannaway. It saw Gantu hired by Jumba’s former partner, Dr. Jacques
von Hämsterviel (Jeff Bennett), to retrieve the rest of Jumba’s experiments.
The experiments (mostly called “cousin” by Stitch) all resembled Stitch with
variations in size, color or appendages, and each series was designed for a
specific purpose: 0-Series
was the test batch that included household helpers; 1-Series
caused civic disturbances; 2-Series
utilized technology and science; 3-Series
worked psychologically; 4-Series
were militaristic and mostly failures; 5-Series
affected the elements and environment; and the 6-Series
could cause doomsday on a galactic level. It’s discovered that Jumba has been
keeping them in dehydrated form in a container he was hiding, and Gantu took
Jumba hostage in exchange for it. Gantu also acquired his own “Stitch” by
releasing Experiment 625 (eventually named Reuben, voiced by Rob Paulsen) to
torture Jumba; but while 625 had all of Stitch’s abilities (as well as his
coloring in his initial
first appearance in Disney
Adventures magazine), he was also
incredibly lazy and sandwich-hungry (hence his name). However,
the good guys managed to retrieve Jumba and the experiments and stop Hämsterviel
and Gantu. They also found a purpose for the experiment Lilo released earlier, appropriately
named “Sparky”,
in powering the Kilauea
Lighthouse; long dormant due to the expense in powering it.
Unfortunately, five more experiments end up revived and loose.
This led directly into Lilo &
Stitch: The Series (originally going to be called Stitch! The TV Series after
the sequel film), which followed Lilo, Stitch and their ‘ohana as they
tracked down escaped experiments before Hämsterviel, Gantu and Reuben could,
change them from bad to good, and find them a place where they could truly
belong (much as they had with Sparky). Jumba and Pleakley remained with Lilo’s
family, with Pleakley often disguising himself in a variety of Earth clothing
and wigs (generally of the female variety). As with other Disney cartoons based
on their films, a great deal of the voice cast returned to reprise their
respective roles. The only exceptions were Cobra Bubbles, who was taken over by
Richardson (although Rhames did voice the character in an episode when an
experiment took his form); rich popular girl and Lilo’s rival Mertle
Edmonds (Liliana
Mumy,
replacing Miranda
Paige Walls); and Nani’s surfer boyfriend David
Kawnea (Dee
Bradley Baker, replacing Lee). Other characters
included Mertle’s entourage of Yuki
(Lili Ishida),
Elena
(Jillian Henry)
and Teresa
(Kali Whitehurst);
Keoni
Jameson (Shaun
Fleming), Lilo’s crush who had a crush on Pleakley, believing
him to be Lilo’s aunt; Victoria
(Alyson Stoner),
Lilo’s new human best friend; Mrs.
Hasagawa (Amy
Hill),
a kindly but forgetful old lady that ran a fruit stand; Moses
Puloki (Kunewa
Mook), the hula teacher at Lilo’s school; a sunburned
ice cream-eating tourist (Frank Welker),
who always dropped his ice cream before he could finish it; and Charles
and Mary, a honeymooning couple that always ran afoul of
Stitch’s cousins.
Lilo & Stitch: The Series debuted
on ABC
on September 20, 2003 as part of the ABC
Kids
programming block, then premiered on Disney Channel
on October 12 with episodes also airing on Toon Disney.
It was developed by Gannaway and Winfield. Writers for the series
included Winfield, Thomas
D. Hart, Henry
Gilroy, Kevin
D. Campbell, Madellaine Paxson,
Jim Peronto,
Catherine Lieuwen,
Brian Swenlin,
John Wray,
Laura McCreary,
Kenneth Koonce,
Robert Martin,
Chad F. Rogers,
Jan Strnad,
Heather Lombard,
Evan Gore,
John Behnke,
Rob Humphrey,
Dana Landsberg,
David Warick,
Amy Debartlomeis, Brandon Sawyer
and Mark
Drop,
with Gannaway, Winfield, Paxson, Hart, Gore, Lombard and Campbell serving as
story editors at various points. Characters were designed by Greg Guler,
Mark Cote,
José Zelaya,
Virginia Hawes,
Ken Boyer
and Landsberg, with animation duties handled by Jade
Animation, Rough
Draft Korea, Starburst
Animation, Toon
City Animation and Wang Film Productions
Company. The title sequence was animated by Hook Up Animation
and directed by Ed
Wexler. The series’ theme was “Aloha, E Komo Mai”, written
by Danny Jacob
and Ali.
B. Olmo and performed by Jump5
with some interjections from Stitch. The rest of the music was composed by Mike Tavera.
The series ran for two seasons,
totaling 65-episodes; the standard for the majority of Disney’s programs to
make it eligible for syndication. Episodes were typically named after the
prominent experiment featured in its story, with the exception of “Rufus” (more
on that in a bit). Some episodes were aired out of production order, meaning
that experiments that would debut on screen already appeared on the program and
events that had yet to occur were referenced. Lilo also returned to wearing a
red Mumu as she did in the film, having worn a green one during the first
season. A reduced budget for the second season saw four episodes condensed into
two, making them the only episodes with two story segments instead of one
complete story. The season also had an incredibly inconsistent release
schedule, airing 26 episodes between 2004 and 2006. Following the 2004
Indian Ocean Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami,
the episode “Cannonball” was pulled for two months due to the titular
experiment causing tsunamis in the story. Additionally, the episode “Ace” was
reworked into a clip show as the original plot involved the creation of a controlled
tidal wave (that would end up out of control) as a ploy to show Jumba
was evil enough to remain a member of the Evil Genius Organization. It was
nominated for a Daytime
Emmy Award and a Motion
Picture Sound Editors award.
Inspired by the promotion for the
original film, four episodes of the second season featured crossovers with
other Disney Television
Animation programs. It was the fourth to do so, following Darkwing
Duck with appearances by Gizmoduck
(Hamilton Camp)
from DuckTales (1987);
Hercules:
The Series with characters from Aladdin;
and House
of Mouse with a cameo by Pepper
Ann.
A crossover between Gargoyles and
a planned Atlantis:
The Lost Empire show was considered,
but the latter’s poor box office saw the spin-off scrapped. In the episode
“Spats”, the titular characts from The
Proud Family come to stay in Jumba and
Pleakly’s “Bed and Not Breakfast” (made out of Jumba’s ship) for their family
vacation. In “Lax”, the kids from Recess visit the island so that Gretchen Grundler
(Ashley Johnson)
could use a telescope to investigate a possible new planet (this was one of the
only episodes to initially debut on Toon Disney, and marked the final
appearance of the Recess characters). “Morpholomew” had the main
characters of American
Dragon: Jake Long visit the island
to investigate the reports of magical creatures (aka, the experiments) running
loose. Finally, “Rufus” saw Lilo call on Kim
Possible (Christy
Carlson Romano) and Ron Stoppable
(Will Friedle)
from Kim
Possible to help her rescue Stitch from the
clutches of Kim’s villains Dr.
Drakken (John
DiMaggio) and Shego
(Nicole Sullivan).
The episode was so named because Ron’s pet naked mole rat, Rufus
(Nancy Cartwright),
was mistaken for an experiment during the episode. An additional crossover
occurred when McDonald’s castmates from the sketch comedy series Kids in the Hall--Dave Foley,
Mark McKinney,
Scott Thompson
and Bruce
McCulloch--guest-starred as members of his family (and a
priest) in the episode “Fibber”.
While the show was in production,
Disney produced another direct-to-video film in the franchise: Lilo &
Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch, released on August 30, 2005. The film
was set chronologically between the theatrical film and Stitch! It dealt
with Stitch lashing out due to his molecules not being fully charged before
Jumba was arrested. The film was written by Michael LaBash,
Tony Leondis,
Eddie Guzelian
and Alexa
Junge, and directed by LaBash and Leondis. Lee returned to
voice David for the final time, while Dakota Fanning
played Lilo at Chase’s suggestion due to her being too busy with the series. A
short, The Origin of Stitch written by LaBash and Guzelian and directed
by Mike
Disa
and Tony
Bancroft, was included with the film.
A
third direct-to-video film, Leroy & Stitch, was released on June 27,
2006 (after airing on June 23) and served as a conclusion to the main Lilo
& Stitch franchise and the animated series. Written by Gannaway and
Winfield and directed by Gannaway with Craig, the film was set three years
later after all of the experiments had been rounded up. Lilo, Stitch and their
‘ohana were honored by the Galactic Alliance (as the Federation was called in
the show) and are offered new positions: Jumba was allowed access to his lab
again; Pleakley was made chairman of Earth Studies at Galactic Alliance
Community College; Stitch was made captain of the Galactic Armada; and Lilo was
named ambassador to Earth and guardian of the experiments. However, Gantu broke
Hämsterviel out of prison and they forced Jumba to create an evil duplicate of
Stitch: Leroy (Sanders), along with an army of clones of him. Leroy was sent to
Earth to capture all of the experiments while Hämsterviel took over the galaxy.
That
wasn’t the end of Stitch on television, however. The following year, Disney
released a short called Stitch Meets High
School Musical, tying into the debut of High School
Musical 2. It had Lilo &
Stitch characters play a friendly game of basketball before performing a
dance number to “We’re
All in This Together” from the first film.
In 2008, Disney Television International Japan debuted the anime series Stitch!,
which
saw Stitch (Kōichi
Yamadera & Ben Diskin),
Jumba (Shōzō Iizuka &
Winfield) and Pleakley (Yūji
Mitsuya & Ted
Biaselli) relocate to the fictional island of Izayoi off the
shore of Okinawa, Japan
(then into Okinawa itself for the third season) after Lilo (Tomoe Hanba
& Gwendoline Yeo/Melissa Fahn)
had grown up and gotten her own family. There they befriended a local
10-year-old girl named Yuna
Kamihara (Motoko
Kumai & Eden Riegel)
and became immersed in Japanese culture as they had the Hawaiian one
previously. None of the original cast returned to provide the English dubs for
their characters, save Rocky
McMurray as Experiment-150, aka Clyde.
In 2017, an English-language-produced 13-episode Chinese animated series
debuted called Stitch
& Ai. Similar to the anime,
Stitch (Li
Zhengxiang & Diskin) ended up abducted by alien criminals
who wanted to activate a secret metamorphosis program that would turn Stitch
into a giant monster. He ended up getting away and wound up in Huangshan, Anhui,
where he befriended Wang
Ai Ling (Jiang Sunwei & Erica
Mendez). Ai was in danger of being taken away from her
sister, Jiejie
(Li Yan & Laura
Post),
by their aunt Daiyu
(Yan Lixuan
& Post) who felt she belonged with her in the city. Jumba (Cheng Yuzhu
& Winfield) and Pleakley (Hu Qian
& Lucien
Dodge), sent to rescue Stitch by the Galactic Federation,
allowed him to remain with Ai and stayed as well.
Aside
from Stitch, the breakout character of the franchise was Experiment-624, aka Angel
(Tara Strong).
She possessed a siren song capable of reverting rehabilitated people and
experiments evil and became Stitch’s love interest (and, as a result, was the
only experiment not to be called “cousin” by him). She only appeared in 3
episodes of the series—one of them being only a cameo—but it was enough to
enamor the audience overseas. She became a recurring character in Stitch! and
the only Disney Television Animation character to appear in the games Disney Magic Kingdoms and
Disney
Getaway Blast. Along with being one of
the costumed characters at various Disney Parks, she also has (as of this
writing) her own
dedicated page on Disney’s store site; arguably getting
more merchandise based on her than even Lilo.
Disney’s
Lilo & Stitch 2: Hämsterviel Havoc, released in
2004 for the Game
Boy Advance, was a sequel to the 2002 video game.
Developed by Climax
Studios, Hämsterviel used Angel to make some experiments evil
again while capturing Nani and David, and Lilo and Stitch had to recapture the
experiments and use their abilities to progress further. While that was the
only conventional video game released for the show, there were a number of
Flash games published on the Disney website for a time. Beach Treasure was
a platformer that had players helping Lilo or Stitch find and recover
experiment balls on a beach before time ran out. Cosmic Slugger was
a baseball game where the player had to help Stitch hit a target number of home
runs and get as many points as possible. Hula Hustle had
the player help Stitch learn how to hula by following the on-screen commands,
avoiding the ones Hämsterviel tossed in to foul him up. Mission:
Experiments on the Loose was
a puzzle game that had the player help Stitch reach the exit of a level by
clicking groupings of same-colored blocks out of his way. Jumba’s Lab allowed
players to create their own experiments by mixing and matching parts. Alien
Interception had Stitch looking to
blast experiments Hämsterviel freed with a teleportation ray without hitting
his friends in the process. Speed Chase saw Stitch racing around the
island to collect experiments before Gantu could. Tiki Bowl was
a standard themed bowling game.
The
Disney Adventures comics were collected in Comic
Zone Volume 1: Disney’s Lilo & Stitch,
with
stories spanning between all the films and the series. While there has been some
DVD releases overseas in places like Japan
and Czechia,
it has experienced a very limited home media release in North America. The
episodes “Mr. Stenchy” and “Clip” were included as part of the interactive DVD
board game Lilo
& Stitch’s Island of Adventures in
2003. “Slushy” and “Poxy” were part of two separate Disney Channel-themed Game
Boy Advance Video compilations. “Link” was included as a
bonus feature on the Leroy & Stitch DVD. The series was made
available for streaming on DisneyNow
and DisneyLife,
and then became one of the launch titles for the service Disney+
in 2019. In 2025, Lilo
& Stitch became the next in a series of Disney live-action remakes,
featuring Sanders as Stitch, Carrere as a social worker, and Lee as the manager
of a restaurant.
Season 1:
“Richter” (9/30/03) – Lilo & Stitch head underground to find an experiment causing earthquakes that threaten to crack the planet in half.
“Spike” (11/5/04) – Lilo’s hopes to beat Mertle in a trivia contest are dashed when Stitch is stung by an experiment that turns him goofy, while Pleakley starts a therapy group to reform experiments.
“Stitch! The Movie” (8/26/03) – Hämsterviel hires Gantu to retrieve the other 625 experiments from Jumba.