2025’s Lilo & Sтιтch and How to Train Your Dragon could be responsible for a major new Hollywood trend thanks to their combined box office success. Both movies are live-action remakes of iconic animated features, which is a format that became increasingly popular after Disney’s live-action Alice in Wonderland grossed more than $1 billion in 2010.

The live-action Lilo & Sтιтch is a remake of the 2002 тιтle of the same name, following orphan Lilo (Maia Kealoha) bonding with a chaotic but adorable alien genetic experiment named Sтιтch (Chris Sanders).

Meanwhile, How to Train Your Dragon, which is DreamWorks’ first live-action remake, reimagines their 2010 movie, following young Viking Hiccup (Mason Thames) bonding with the wounded dragon Toothless in spite of his village’s determination to destroy all dragons. Both movies have so far found places in the Top 5 highest-grossing movies of 2025.

Live-Action Remakes Had Mixed Box Office Results In Recent Years

They’re Not Guaranteed Billion-Dollar Hits

While there have been quite a few Disney live-action remakes that have become billion-dollar hits (namely 2019’s The Lion King, 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, and 2019’s Aladdin, in addition to Alice in Wonderland), since 2020, their performance at the box office has grown considerably more spotty.

Some of this is natural. 2020’s Mulan and 2021’s Cruella had underwhelming ticket sales, but both were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the movies that followed once theaters properly reopened have also had questionable track records. Below, see a breakdown of the performance of every theatrical Disney live-action remake between 2020 and the release of Lilo & Sтιтch:

Only Snow White and Mulan failed to make back their budgets, but this does not mean every other movie was profitable. While the exact break-even points for these тιтles are unknown, many movies need to earn back two and a half times their budgets in order to turn a profit in theaters.

This makes it unlikely that the theatrical runs of Cruella and The Little Mermaid saw either of those тιтles end up in the black, though their VOD and streaming revenue probably pushed them over the edge eventually.

How Lilo & Sтιтch & HTTYD Turned Live-Action Remakes’ Box Office Around

Both Are Remakes Of More Contemporary тιтles

While the live-action format seemed to be facing dwindling audience interest, the summer of 2025 has seen Lilo & Sтιтch gross $952.6 million against a reported budget of $100 million at the time of writing, while How to Train Your Dragon has so far grossed $471.7 million against $150 million. Collectively, they have grossed a whopping $1.4 billion.

In addition to redeeming the box office prospects of the live-action remake format after Snow White bombed, one notable aspect that links these two live-action remakes is the fact that both are adapting animated movies from the 21st century, as the original Lilo & Sтιтch came out in 2002 while How to Train Your Dragon debuted in 2010.

Before 2025, the newest Disney movie that had been adapted into live-action was 1998’s Mulan, with the billion-dollar тιтles on the roster adapting movies from 1951 (Alice in Wonderland), 1991 (Beauty and the Beast), 1992 (Aladdin), and 1994 (The Lion King).

The latter three all come from the period known as the Disney Renaissance, though their fellow Renaissance тιтle The Little Mermaid clearly did not perform at the same level, potentially indicating an overall diminishment in audience interest in that period.

The fact that two different studios have experimented with live-action remakes of much more recent тιтles could show that the interest of general audiences is drifting toward the cinema of the 2000s and the early 2010s.

More Recent Animated Movies Will Likely Get Live-Action Remakes Soon

Multiple Of Such Remakes Are Already On Their Way

This trend of reimagining more recent animated features is already set to continue. In fact, the next outing from Disney will be the live-action Moana remake, which is set to debut in 2026, just 10 years after the original animated movie hit theaters.

Additionally, both of 2025’s hit live-action remakes have had sequels greenlit. While the upcoming Lilo & Sтιтch 2 may not be a direct adaptation of any previous installment in the franchise, How to Train Your Dragon is set to adapt the story of the original animated movie of the same name, which debuted just 11 years ago, in 2014.

It seems likely that the box office success of Lilo & Sтιтch and How to Train Your Dragon in favor of remakes of older тιтles will already be sparking a trend of remakes of post-2000 animated тιтles, but if those three upcoming тιтles perform similarly, the trend could become a full-on flood of similar тιтles.

Which Recent Animated Movies Would Be Best Suited For A Remake?

Some тιтles Are Better Fits Than Others

While both hit 2025 remakes feature a major character that is entirely a CGI creation, the majority of their casts are made up of real live-action humans. It makes sense that similar тιтles with primarily human characters would be the best fit for the live-action treatment, to keep budgets from ballooning.

This limits DreamWorks somewhat, because their most popular franchises, including Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar, are populated with either anthropomorphic animals or fantasy creatures. However, 1998’s The Prince of Egypt and 2000’s The Road to El Dorado could potentially fit the format well.

Meanwhile, Disney has several animated тιтles in their library that could be natural follow-ups to Lilo & Sтιтch and How to Train Your Dragon. These include 2009’s The Princess and the Frog and 2013’s Frozen. 2010’s Tangled is also an option, but that remake was previously in development and was scrapped in the wake of Snow White‘s disappointing box office.

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