We can argue the necessity of Disney’s live-action remakes until we’re blue in the face, but there’s one truth we can’t ignore: good or bad, they make buckets of money for the House of Mouse. Lilo & Stitch will be no exception — Disney’s latest adaptation is tracking for a box office record this Memorial Day weekend. As the company’s unofficial mascot, Stitch was already a huge draw, and according to Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman, the film will only bolster demand for the little blue alien.
“We’ve seen the thing explode from a Disney+ and consumer-products perspective,” Bergman told The Wall Street Journal of Stitch’s success. “It feels like it’s going to work very well, and it’s the kind of property that lends itself to more.”
Disney has wisely released a gauntlet of new Stitch-inspired merch ahead of the film’s release, but they’re also thinking ahead when it comes to Stitch’s future on-screen. If the new Lilo & Stitch is as big of a hit as Bergman hopes it will be, a sequel may soon be on the table — and the key to another film may lie in a forgotten Lilo & Stitch story.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Lilo & Stitch.
For the most part, Lilo & Stitch follows the basic beats of the original animated film, resisting the urge to end its story with a cliffhanger or an overt sequel tease. That said, it does leave the door slightly ajar for Lilo’s adventures with Stitch to continue — and for their ohana to get a little bit bigger down the line.
Stitch is the product of an illegal experiment conducted by the mad scientist Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis), and as we learn late in the film, he’s not the only one. When Jumba catches up with Stitch on Earth, he’s shocked by his attachment to Lilo (Maia Kealoha), as he bred Stitch as a pure destructive force. He decides to make a few tweaks to Stitch’s genetic code, eliminating his empathy altogether and turning him into a new experiment. He was once “Experiment 626,” but when Jumba’s work is done, he’ll be 627: a truly unstoppable force for evil.
627 is never mentioned in the original Lilo & Stitch, but he is a key figure in the franchise at large. He was first introduced in Lilo & Stitch: The Series, and is one of many experiments that play a role in the spinoff. Though Jumba’s plan to replace Stitch is thwarted in the live-action film, we could see 627 — and other characters from the animated series — in a sequel.
Lilo & Stitch folds in another subtle reference to the show in its third act, teasing schematics of experiments like Angel and Experiment 629, otherwise known as Leroy. The introduction of new experiments could easily fuel another live-action film, or even a trilogy. There’s more to the Lilo & Stitch franchise than the movie that started it all: Disney has plenty of material to mine, and as long as there’s demand, there’s no reason to cut Stitch’s momentum short.
