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The Stories Behind the Original Lilo & Stitch’s Disney-Spoofing Ads
In 2002, the ads for Lilo & Stitch blew raspberries in the face of Disney tradition. Here’s how they came together.
But the ads for Lilo & Stitch blew raspberries in the face of all that tradition, with the alien experiment Stitch disrupting scenes from some of Disney’s biggest hits: wrecking a chandelier during the central dance sequence in Beauty & the Beast and pissing off Belle; surfing a wave straight into The Little Mermaid ’s Ariel and knocking her off her rock; sidling up to Aladdin and Princess Jasmine’s flying carpet in a spaceship, honking his horn, and stealing Jasmine away; replacing baby Simba in the majestic “Circle of Life” opening to The Lion King. These ads — presented as teasers, TV spots, and a theatrical trailer that seemed to begin as a very serious-minded tribute to Disney’s great history — served as a delightful introduction to a character that would grow to become one of the studio’s most popular. Sanders remembered running into one marketing executive beforehand and getting “the vibe that he wasn’t super stoked that we were there.” But the pitch got a big laugh at the meeting, and it prompted Roy E. Disney, chairman of the animation department and a longtime company board member (and Walt’s nephew), to muse that Stitch should turn up in other movies as well for the ad campaign.
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