In February 2025, almost a dozen images were circulated on social networks, allegedly showing how the title character of the famous Disney cartoon would look in the upcoming film remake. We have verified the authenticity of these footage.
The viral posts feature up to nine photos that are said to be footage from the upcoming feature film Lilo & Stitch. Moreover, all images depict only the second title character, the blue alien. The authors of some posts also compared scenes from the original cartoon with alleged footage from the film version.
Such posts became the most popular on VKontakte, where they were published by public groups NR (672,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Rhymes and punches"(633,000), "Hell's Kitchen: Non-Spoiler" (twice: 490,000 And 41,000), Netflix (136,000), "PlayStation World» (129,000), Marvel/DC: Geek Movies (115,000), Kosti Bloggers (113,000), Marvel/DC (66,000), "Popcorn: Non-Spoiler" (twice: 57,000 And 32,000) etc. Similar posts can be found in Telegram channels, including “Rhymes and punches"(187,000 views), "Mediaka"(173,000) and Kosti (139,000), as well as on Instagram*, where, for example, the account of the Belarusian cinema chain wrote about it Skyline Cinema. Entertainment sites published news items with the same selection PlayGround And Animation Club.
"Lilo and Stitch"from Walt Disney was released in 2002 and was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Film category. In the story, a girl living in Hawaii, Lilo, makes friends with a cute-looking alien named Stitch. Premiere of the same name film remake planned at the end of May 2025.
At the time of writing this analysis, the studio published several official promotional materials for the upcoming film, including posters, teasers and stills. However, images from the viral collection are not presented either on the Walt Disney website or social networks, or in promotional videos for the film remake. In addition, the blue alien from the distributed footage looks different from the hero who is shown in the already released materials.
All publications mentioned at the beginning of this text appear to contain cropped images. Using a reverse search, you can find full versions of the same pictures, and in all cases, in the lower left corner there is a barely visible watermark with the Latin letters J and H.
On February 10, 2025, images from the distributed collection were published on the platform Artstation Czech Republic-based 3D artist Juan Hernández. Later in his instagram the author himself posted circumcised versions of the same pictures.
Hernandez has previously worked on major film projects. Yes, he himself wrotethat for the film "Imaginary friends"with Ryan Reynolds helped create more than ten characters. However, judging by the signatures in the artist’s posts, he did not participate in the creation of “Lilo and Stitch”. Hernandez stated that this was his version of a realistic Stitch, which he made as a visual development exercise. “This is a great character and I had a lot of fun working on him. I thought it was both a great design and a technical challenge, especially with the extendable arms and handling the fur at the same time. I tried to reconstruct the original design and looked for small elements that could bring realism while staying true to the original,” Hernandez said.
According to the artist, he also decided to make several cinematic shots repeating scenes from the original cartoon. Moreover, not nine, but ten such images were published on his Artstation page.
In addition, the author shared several videos with an animated version of his Stitch, and also demonstrated some of the stages of its creation.
Thus, the authors of large public pages on VKontakte, Telegram channels and entertainment sites passed off unofficial fan art as authentic footage from the upcoming film.
This is not the first such case involving Stitch. Back in 2019 (long before the filming of the film remake) in social networks distributed another image of this character, claiming that this is how he will look in a future film.
It turned out that it was a drawing by a concept artist Boris Kiselicki from Germany. He published his work back in 2016, and later explainedthat it has nothing to do with the Disney film. The uncropped version of the art also had the author's watermark on it.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: Juan Hernandez
- Is it true that actress Alyssa Milano was the inspiration for Ariel from The Little Mermaid?
- Is the selection of erotic and vulgar scenes in Disney cartoons true?
- Is it true that the video shows an octopus walking on the beach?
- The fictional world of Gek publics (VMGP)
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
