How the Lilo & Stitch Marketing Team Avoided an Ugly Sonic Glitch

Sorry, Ugly Sonic—you’re not going to have an Ugly Stitch to add to your friend group.

Back in 2019, Paramount learned the perils of building a major movie marketing campaign around the reveal of a “live-action” version of a beloved animated character—in that case, Sonic the Hedgehog. When fans got a look at the film’s take on the classic video game speedster, they made like Knuckles and didn’t chuckle.

The largely negative online reaction spurred the filmmakers to instead flex their muscles by postponing the movie for a ground-up character rebuild that was more in line with vintage Sonic. The result of that extreme makeover? A billion-dollar-grossing global franchise that’s currently prepping its fourth installment.

No such last-minute interventions were required to rescue Stitch, the cute and fluffy half of the titular Lilo & Stitch duo headlining Disney’s live-action adaptation of its 2002 animated favorite. According to Mouse House marketing evp Martha Morrison, she and her team knew they had a star on their hands the moment they laid eyes on the CGI recreation of the previously hand-drawn extraterrestrial.

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“He was obviously very cute, and felt very much like the character people know and love,” Morrison tells ADWEEK, admitting that an Ugly Sonic-like scenario was a concern prior to her first look at the new Stitch. “Believe me, you run through all the things that people could potentially say about the character that would present a problem. But the filmmakers nailed it.”

The updated Stitch has already won the hearts of moviegoers heading into opening weekend. Box office estimates indicate that Lilo & Stitch will likely bank nearly $300 million around the world over the Memorial Day holiday. (Not bad for a movie that started its life as a direct-to-Disney+ production.)

And Disney’s Stitch-centric marketing campaign can be credited with laying the groundwork for that hefty haul. The alien has been running rampant through a series of real-world pop-up stunts, including a Super Bowl appearance that almost upstaged the Big Game as well as viral movie theater appearances.

“It’s been so much fun having him out in the world,” Morrison says. “He’s a little naughty, but he’s also so sweet. People have fallen in love with the character.”

Bowl-ed over

Stitch made his first appearance at last year’s D23, Disney’s annual fan event. A custom-created trailer teased his arrival for the assembled audience, and you can hear their cheers in real time when Stitch tears through the screen and into their lives.

That playful introduction purposefully echoed the way his predecessor made his debut over two decades ago. The trailers for the animated Lilo & Stitch memorably placed the alien in such Disney classics as Aladdin and The Lion King.

Needless to say, he didn’t play nicely with his fellow cartoons.

“We knew there was a lot of admiration and nostalgia for how Stitch interacted with other Disney properties in 2002,” Morrison notes. “That was something that became a factor for us: How do we take this character and have him intervene in a fun way that also encapsulates his personality?”

Instead of simply recreating that earlier Disney movie mayhem, though, Morrison’s team decided to find ways that Stitch could show up in the real world: “There were these cultural moments happening within our campaign window, and we decided that Stitch should be there.”

When it comes to cultural moments, it’s hard to get bigger than the Big Game. So it only made sense that Stitch would insert himself into the on-field action during the Super Bowl—an idea that Morrison credits to creative marketing evp Jackson George.

“Obviously, it was a complicated negotiation,” she says of how the Stitch cameo came to pass. “But the NFL was game, and we made sure to pick a moment where it felt seamless—like you were still watching the game. Only then do you realize that Stitch is there!”

According to Morrison, the Super Bowl stunt required a custom shoot on a football field, and then the visual effects department worked their digital magic on the footage. The result was a piece of in-game promotion that stood apart from the other movie trailers airing that night.

“It can be hard to cut through if you aren’t a big superhero movie,” Morrison notes. “Our spot got attention by feeling like it was almost built into the programming.”

The next wave

Coming off the Super Bowl, Morrison says her team fielded a number of calls from interested parties looking to recapture some of Stitch’s chaos magic. But they had already planned for the campaign’s next beat to be more story-focused and emphasize the film’s human stars—specifically Maia Kealoha as Lilo and Sydney Agudong as her older sister, Nani. Those characters were prominently featured in the first full trailer, which debuted with the release of Snow White in March.

“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.

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.

“One thing from the Lilo & Stitch campaign that will carry over into Moana is the magic of seeing something that you love come to life in live action,” she remarks, noting that the original film remains omnipresent in peoples’ lives in a way that older Disney titles—including Lilo & Stitch—aren’t. “The love and care the filmmakers are taking to honor the Moana legacy is something we’ll be tapping into.”

In other words, you can bet that an Ugly Heihei situation won’t be on the menu.