Live-Action 'Lilo & Stitch' Movie Still A Thing, Finds Its Director In Jon M. Chu

The moment Disney started making live-action remakes of its classic animated movies, it instantly became inevitable that they would one day remake “Lilo & Stitch.” We knew we would one day have to witness the horror of a photorealistic Stitch interacting with actual humans, and it seems like not even a pandemic could stop the house of mouse. Turns out, not only is the “Lilo & Stitch” remake very much alive and in development, but Jon M. Chu has signed on to direct it.

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The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop, with a report that the director behind “Crazy Rich Asians,” the upcoming “In the Heights” adaptation, and the recently-announced “Willow” TV series, Jon M. Chu, will also direct the latest live-action remake of a Disney animated film. The current draft of the project was written by Mike Van Waes, who wrote the (still?) upcoming “The Crooked Man” spin-off of “The Conjuring 2,” but THR is reporting that Chu is now looking for a new scribe to collaborate with. The film will be produced by Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich via their Rideback banner, which made the high-grossing live-action remake of “Aladdin.”

The report also mentions that Disney is considering making this exclusively for Disney+, which is interesting. Though one of the launch titles for the streaming service was the remake of “The Lady and the Tramp,” you’d expect Disney to want to capitalize on the popularity of the Stitch character with a big theatrical push.

On the one hand, if you want someone to remake the film, you could do a lot worse than Jon M. Chu, but on the other hand, why remake this at all? The classic princesses tales, sure. “Beauty and the Beast?” By all means. It won’t be that much different from the original, but it translated relatively well. But “Lilo & Stitch?” Even if you dump “Avengers: Endgame” levels of cash into it, it will still lose a substantial part of what made the original enjoyable to repace its visual style with photorealism (see “The Lion King” remake).

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In any case, we have to make our peace with the fact that Disney will not stop until every animated film gets a live-action remake, as long as it’s the popular ones and not the ones that could actually benefit from it — “Atlantis,” anyone? Or even “The Black Cauldron?” The question now becomes, will they do a marketing campaign as cool as the original one?