The live-action Lilo & Stitch remake broke some massive box office records, beating out big-name mega-hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Avengers: Endgame. The reimaging of the beloved Disney animated classic, directed by Marcel the Shell with Shoes On's Dean Fleischer Camp, had long been assumed to become a box office smash given the positive sentiment fans have toward the original film, but the extent of that success was always a significant question.
As Lilo & Stitch rounds out its first weekend in theaters, the latest Disney live-action remake has started to climb the global box office ranks, writing its name in the record books. This box office success comes despite mixed reviews for the film, potentially setting it up for a long and fruitful run in theaters around the globe.
According to box office insider Luiz Fernando, Lilo & Stitch beat out both Top Gun: Maverick and Avengers: Endgame in its first few days in theaters.
The new romp from Walt Disney Pictures earned a whopping $182.7 million at the domestic box office over its four-day Memorial Day opening weekend. This was enough to earn the mark as the highest-grossing film ever during that Memorial Day window, featuring the fourth biggest Monday at the box office for a single movie since tracking started ($37 million).
In doing this, Lilo & Stitch eclipsed the Memorial Day Monday record previously held by Tom Cruise's 2022 smash hit Top Gun: Maverick ($33.8 million) and broke into the top-four biggest Monday box office hauls of all time by passing Avengers: Endgame's $33.8 million.
Lilo & Stitch marks the latest in a long string of animated-to-live-action remakes from Disney, following in the footsteps of The Little Mermaid, Mulan, and Cinderella. The film stars Maia Kealoha as Lilo Pelekai, a young Hawaiian girl who bonds with a dangerous blue alien named Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders) after he comes crashing down to Earth.
Reviews for the project have been less-than-stellar, with longtime fans bristling with the fact that it made some significant changes to the original story (read more about every change that the live-action Lilo & Stitch makes here), but that has not seemed to slow it down, as it is already dominating the global box office.
What Does Lilo & Stitch's Box Office Success Mean?
The live-action Lilo & Stitch is likely not going anywhere anytime soon. Coming out of its opening Memorial Day four-day weekend, the movie will almost surely continue to perform, given just how big it seems to be out of the gate.
So far, globally, the movie has made over $340 million. This pace so early puts the film into a different conversation, one that could include the B word (aka $1 billion).
Lilo & Stitch will likely be the biggest box office success story of 2025 so far, but many more movies, like Fantastic 4 and Avatar 3, will likely take the box office crown later this year.
Coming off this stellar opening weekend, there is not a lot in Lilo & Stitch's way for the next couple of weeks to slow it down. Through June, movies like Ballerina, Elio, and F1 will threaten to take some of the attention away from it, but if momentum holds, there is a chance it could ride this high right through June and into early July.
Beyond that, though, Disney should already be considering what to do with the movie once it is done in theaters. It will undoubtedly come to Disney+ at some point later in the year, capturing a whole new audience who did not see it in theaters there. Then, there will be the question of sequels.
Lilo & Stitch, like many animated Disney films of its era, got a straight-to-DVD sequel film in 2005 and a tie-in animated series. While Disney has largely abandoned this strategy in the decades since then, the studio could and should look at sequels for the live-action movie.
There is a post-credit scene at the end of the Lilo & Stitch remake that potentially sets up a second movie, so the narrative fodder is there if Disney wants to capitalize on it.
Speaking in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman teased that the movie "lends itself to more," potentially hinting that Disney knew this was going to be a massive box office hit and is already planning some sort of follow-up.
