This weekend, Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” returns to theaters in live-action/CGI form and is expected to lead the Memorial Day box office to a potential new record. But its release alongside Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” also makes it a box office rematch 23 years in the making:
Stitch vs. Tom Cruise.
Back on June 21, 2002, Disney’s original animated “Lilo & Stitch” was released in theaters alongside one of Cruise’s most acclaimed action films outside the “Mission: Impossible” series: “Minority Report.” Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella, the cyberpunk classic stars Cruise as John Anderton, the head of a police unit known as Precrime, which interprets abstract visions from powerful psychics of future crimes and tries to stop them before they happen.
“Minority Report” and “Lilo & Stitch” hit theaters during an extremely competitive summer, one filled with titles whose IP, actors and filmmakers still remain major Hollywood players today. “Spider-Man,” the forefather of the 21st century superhero boom, was released that year, as was “Scooby-Doo” from future DC Studios chief James Gunn, Matt Damon’s “The Bourne Identity” and “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.”
Much like the “Lilo & Stitch” remake and “Mission: Impossible,” the original film and “Minority Report” were perfect counterprogramming for one another — one was a PG animated film, the other was a color-drained sci-fi noir that predicted our future of algorithm-driven ads, touch screens and surveillance. Turns out, there was demand for both, as the race between “Stitch” and “Report” ended up being tight and came down to Monday actuals to determine the No. 1 film for the weekend.
In the end, “Minority Report” came out on top by approximately $417,000, earning a $35.6 million domestic opening weekend (about $63.6 million in today’s money after inflation adjustment) compared to $35.2 million for “Lilo & Stitch.” Cruise also won in the final global tally with $358 million grossed by “Minority Report” compared to $273 million for “Stitch.”
But in 2025, it is “Lilo & Stitch,” released by an even more potent Disney marketing machine and driven by millennial nostalgia, that is expected to outgross Cruise’s eighth “Mission: Impossible” film to the tune of hundreds of millions.
While “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” grossed $8.3 million from Thursday preview screenings and is projected to earn at least a respectable $75 million over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend, “Lilo & Stitch” earned $14.5 million from previews and is set to earn at least $120 million over four days, with some projections suggesting the film could pass the $160.5 million record for the May holiday set by another Tom Cruise hit: “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Cruise will probably take this in stride. Over the past several years, with movie theaters struggling after the pandemic, the movie star has become one of the most outspoken voices for the power of seeing films on the big screen. Even in 2023, when his last “M:I” film, “Dead Reckoning,” was facing stiff competition from “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” Cruise went on social media praising those films and posting pictures of him with director Christopher McQuarrie holding their tickets to see the “Barbenheimer” double feature.
Whether it’s his film or another, Cruise just wants people to go to the movies. Given the extraordinarily high numbers predicted for this holiday weekend, losing to “Lilo & Stitch” just might be victory in defeat.
