‘Lilo & Stitch’ has been one of the undisputed surprises at the 2025 box office. He not only exceeded the most warm expectations of Disney at his premiere, recovering his budget in just a couple of days. He has also put an end to the curse of remakes in real image of Disney classics, which carried a frankly terrible quality and box office. And now, all right, right? Well…
Alien pepinazo. As We comment on the week of its premierethis remake of the 2002 animated classic raised worldwide 341 million dollars. Virtually half of that amount, 157.8 million, was in international markets, becoming the second best premiere of the year, only behind ‘A Minecraft movie‘. It has already folded the amount, with 610 million. In Spain, According to ComscoreIt was even better: 5.7 million euros at its premiere, and has already reached 11.57 million. Here it has been the best premiere of the year, providing a good oxygen ball to the battered state box office.
An effective formula. ‘Lilo & Stitch ‘is the last success of a formula that until recently seemed infallible: remake in real image and with CGI effects the company’s animated classics. A apparently undressing idea That, although he has encountered critical voices that have always gone very well at the box office. Thus it was with one of the first of his style, ‘101 Dalmatas’, in 1996, and with the first of the current surge of remakes, the ‘Alice in the Wonderland’ of Tim Burton of 2010 and his sequel. And they still had to get the great successes.
Tachillas and refritos. But from there they did nothing more to climb: ‘Cinderella’, ‘The book of the jungle’, ‘Maleficent’ … until they reached the two great bombings: ‘The beautiful and the beast’ in 2017, with 1,263 million collection, and ‘The León King’ in 2019, with 1,662 million. Two successes of criticism and public that settled the formula under which films were continued that, however, came across increasingly frequent criticisms, such as the rather terrible ‘Aladdin‘ and ‘Dumbo‘, both released the same year, 2019.
Free fall. However, it was a formula that could not last forever. The public’s fatigue due to the patent lack of originality of Hollywood, and that has affected to franchises as successful as Marvel Or Star Wars also made a dent in this genre. It was seen, for example, in ‘Peter and the dragon’ or ‘mulán’ (also devalued by the moment it premiered, during the pandemic and directly in Disney+to boost the newly released platform). The last disasters have been ‘The Little Mermaid‘, very affected by the wear stormy promotion With its two faced protagonists.
To all this are added a series of films that have barely echoed among the public and that in many cases theaters have been skipped, such as ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ or ‘The Lady and the Vagabundo’.
And a couple of exceptions. However, the formula is not completely exhausted, or that should think of Disney. ‘Mufasa’, despite a lazy start, with a premiere well below expectations, honored the strength of the franchise of ‘El Rey León’ and endured all Christmas, adding 670 satisfactory millions of dollars. Incomparable with the collection of his predecessor, but still, one of the successes of 2024. And the case of ‘Lilo & Stitch’ already knows him.
Why are you? The reason why these two have worked in seemingly adverse times for remakes is double: on the one hand, ‘MUFASA’ and ‘Lilo & Stitch’ are less conflictive in their delivery, and they have not had to endure discredit campaigns, Review-pumping and other tactics of harassment and demolition of Toxic fandom. On the other, there are two franchises with good health: ‘The Lion King’ is the most popular and blockbuster remake in the history of Disney; And Stitch is a phenomenon of merchandising Disney Recent: Annual Sales of Products related to the character have gone from 200 million dollars in 2019 to exceed 2.6 billion dollars in the last yearaccording to ‘The Wall Street Journal’.
A future with doubts. But the thing does not end here, because there are no guarantees of success in the coming years. Some remakes have been affected by the prick at the ‘Snow White’ box office, such as ‘entangled’, whose production has been arrested. Of many there are almost no data, such as ‘The Humpback of Notre Dame’, ‘Hercules’ or ‘The Aristogatos’. But the authentic doubts are with ‘Vaiana’, scheduled for July 2026, and that involves a certain risk: its animated precedent is unusually close, 2016 and, in fact, a sequel to theaters has just released. Will you accuse this success more or less safe the wear of the formula?
When we review the successes of 2024 (Among them, by the way, ‘Vaiana 2’), we talked about a problem that Hollywood cannot continue hiding for longer: all its blockbusters are sequelae, remakes or REBOOTS. It is a formula that supposes bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, and the best test is the remake in real image of ‘Vaiana’. It is as simple as this: Hollywood is running out of films to make remakes: the dead end inside a dead end.
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