‘Lilo & Stitch’ and the Power of Zillennial Nostalgia at the Movie Theater

As a childless adult, sitting in a natural wine bar killing time before an early evening showing of the live-action children’s film Lilo & Stitch is a uniquely humbling experience. Even more humbling is showing up lightly buzzed to that screening of Lilo & Stitch.

But, not unlike orange wine, nostalgia is a powerful drug.

This weekend, a dog-like blue alien and precocious 6-year-old, each with their own set of behavioral issues that no amount of gentle parenting could ever solve, just supplanted Tom Cruise, one of our last bona fide movie stars, not once, but twice over. With its $182.7 million at the domestic box office, it bested Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and then beat out 2023’s Top Gun: Maverick as the holiday’s top opener of all time.

It’s unsurprising that a family film over a long, hot Memorial Day weekend was able to reach these heights. Especially with The Minecraft Movie congealing at the two-month mark. But more surprising to some, including several of my colleagues at this publication, is that Lilo & Stitch, a seemingly C-tier Disney animated feature, was the one to do it.

But for a specific age demographic — younger-skewing Millennials and older Gen Z cuspers affectionately known as the Zillennial — Lilo & Stitch had a hold on childhood viewing habits.

Released in 2002, Lilo came after the second golden age of Disney animation (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) when the animated movies out of the house of Mouse were on a downward swing. Traditional animated features like Lilo and its peers, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and The Emperor’s New Groove, were supplanted by offerings from the more ascendant Pixar. Lilo, itself, was sandwiched betweenhitsMonsters Inc. and Finding Nemo.

It may not have been a monster commercial hit or received the awards recognition and spectacular Broadway renditions of its predecessors, but Lilo ingratiated itself to a generation thanks to a non-stop drumbeat of aftermarket products. There was the home video (both on VHS and DVD), an animated TV show that ran on ABC Kids and Disney Channel and a series of video games. It was this kind of manic number of touchpoints that cements a foundation of loyalty that lasts into adulthood.

For the new film, the general audience made up 56 percent of ticket buyers, a higher share than a traditional family title, according to data collected both by Disney and leading exit polling service PostTrak. (By comparison, Moana 2’s general audience was 43 percent.) In terms of loyalty to Lilo across the Gen Z and Millennials, moviegoers between ages 18 and 24 made up a whopping 32 percent of the non-family audience, followed by 33 percent between ages 25 to 34.

Lilo & Stitch was conceived and developed as a streaming movie for Disney+ before Disney shifted it to a theatrical release. After an emphasis on feeding the streaming content maw, the studio began, once again, focusing on the theatrical experience and shifting away from original features for its streaming services.

The early aughts marked the death rattle of a coherent zeitgeist. Large swaths of young audiences in America still had relatively cohesive viewing habits. They loitered outside of theaters with films that stayed put for weeks, and watched TV with ratings in the double digits. The Zillennial habit of going to a physical theater was embedded young, and the muscle memory may have weakened when streaming came along, but it hasn’t yet atrophied.

One insider in their mid-40s lacked the Stitch nostalgia gene when working on the project, and tells THR they were surprised when throngs of younger Disney execs and assistants in their 20s and early 30s gushed how happy they were that a live-action feature film was in the works. They had grown up in the Lilo & Stitch universe.

This summer will have another test of the demo’s power at the box office with Freakier Friday, starring the patron saint of the Zillennial, Lindsay Lohan. The sequel to the 2003 bodyswap comedy starring Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis (itself a remake of the 1976 movie with Jodie Foster) seems like the perfect fodder for a streaming release, but instead is heading to theaters in August. It will be one of Disney’s few live-action theatrical films not based on an animation released in the last several years.

Late last year, after a decade of will-they-won’t-they, Disney said it will proceed with the threequel to 2001’s The Princess Diaries. Star Anne Hathaway’s Instagram post officially announcing the project has over 3 million likes.

Nostalgia as entertainment, intentional or not, is nothing new. But it has not yet been fully exploited for the Zillennial age demographic, which is now one of the largest age groups in the U.S. Over a long holiday weekend, that demo showed up at theaters ready to revel in a sliver of their childhoods. Whether heading to the theater with their own young children in tow, or as a DINK or SINK, they answered the siren call of Stitch. Because, in case you haven’t heard, Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. Especially at the movie theater.