“Once the story spot was out there and people understood there was a balance, it was Stitch Mania starting from the end of April to now,” Morrison laughs.
Stitch’s return to the spotlight was aided by an animatronic version developed by Industrial Light & Magic. That’s the critter that moviegoers saw wreaking havoc in movie theaters during the opening weekend of Thunderbolts,* aka The New Avengers. But Stitch also helpfully scanned movie tickets in between the G-rated mayhem.
Stitch scanning people’s tickets at a movie theater to promote the new ‘LILO & STITCH’ movie.
In theaters on May 23. pic.twitter.com/IvFTKJTEnr
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) May 3, 2025
ILM’s animatronic later made appearances at the Lilo & Stitch press junket and on the red carpet at the movie’s world premiere in L.A.
“Part of the fun is taking Stitch out in the world and allowing fans to interact with him and seeing their response,” Morrison says of orchestrating those social media-friendly moments. “We wanted people to capture it with their cameras and talk about it.”
And more of those appearances are on the way after the movie’s release. Morrison promises that Disney will definitely be taking advantage of 626 Day on June 26—named for Stitch’s experiment number.
“We’ll have some activity around that,” she teases.
Her team will also be re-creating a 2004 stunt promoting the opening of the Stitch’s Great Escape ride at Walt Disney World by wrapping Cinderella Castle in toilet paper. One caveat: This latest TP job is a digital exclusive since papering the real castle is a complicated engineering feat.
“It’s fan service, but we decided not to do it in the exact same way,” Morrison says, echoing the overall approach to the new film’s campaign.
As the first 2000s-era Disney cartoon to receive the live-action treatment, Lilo & Stitch proved an effective training ground for how the marketing team might approach the upcoming IRL version of Moana, scheduled to sail into theaters on July 10, 2026. Morrison worked on the campaign for the 2016 cartoon, which remains one of the most-streamed titles on Disney+ and spawned a 2024 sequel that broke box office records.
