Lilo & Stitch 2 has Chris Sanders directing, so where’s Gantu?
Stitch’s co-creator takes the director’s chair for Disney’s live-action sequel, with shooting set for later this year. The big blue question: does the franchise finally bring back the real villain?
The guy who invented Stitch is now running the whole show. Chris Sanders, who co-created, co-wrote, and co-directed the original 2002 Lilo & Stitch and has voiced the little blue menace in every version since, will direct Disney’s live-action sequel, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Friday.
Sanders was already writing the script, a deal that closed last July. Now he’s directing it too, with shooting due to begin later this year. Jonathan Eirich, who produced the 2025 remake, returns through Rideback, with Ryan Halprin executive producing.
The sequel is a brand-new story, not a remake of the direct-to-video Stitch Has a Glitch. Beyond that, Disney is saying nothing about the plot.
Which brings us to the question every fan of the 2002 original asked walking out of the remake. Where is Captain Gantu?
The Gantu-shaped hole in the first movie
The towering Galactic Federation enforcer who chased Stitch across the original film simply doesn’t exist in the live-action version. Director Dean Fleischer Camp told CinemaBlend that Gantu “just didn’t work so well in live action,“ saying the team explored including him but cut the character to free up room for the emotional story between Lilo and Nani.
The practical factors were hiding in plain sight. The remake was made for a reported $100 million, lean by Disney remake standards, and was originally built as a Disney+ release before getting promoted to theaters. A second fully CG alien heavyweight is exactly the line item that gets cut from a streaming budget. It’s also part of why Jumba and Pleakley spent so much of the movie in human form.
The cut had story consequences too. With no Gantu, Jumba got drafted into the final-villain role, one of the remake’s more debated choices, right alongside the new ending that sent Nani off to college in California.
Why the math just changed
Every reason Gantu got cut has now evaporated.
The budget argument died when the remake crossed $1 billion worldwide, the first Hollywood movie of 2025 to do it, with $423.7 million domestic. Nobody is penny-pinching the sequel’s effects budget.
The creative argument changed hands entirely. The director who made the cut and stood by it has handed the keys to the man who helped create the character in the first place. Sanders has lived inside this universe since he first sketched Stitch for an unfinished children’s book in 1981. If anyone knows how to make a four-armed whale-faced alien captain work on screen, it’s the Wild Robot and How to Train Your Dragon filmmaker who’s spent his career making impossible creatures feel real.
And an original story needs an antagonist. The remake already spent Jumba’s heel turn. The franchise’s deep bench of villains, from Gantu to Dr. Hämsterviel to the 625 other experiments, is sitting right there, and the experiments were the entire engine of the animated series.
None of that is confirmation. Disney hasn’t said the character is in, and the script details are locked away. But the conditions that kept Gantu out of round one don’t exist in round two, and the fan demand has been loud and documented since opening weekend.
Maybe Sanders brings him back. Maybe he’s got something stranger in mind, because the man invented this universe and has earned the benefit of the doubt. Either way, the sequel just became a lot more interesting than “remake, part two.”
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (theme park editor) and the Pirates and Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
The Hollywood Reporter (June 12, 2026), Borys Kit’s exclusive, verified for the Sanders directing news, production timeline, producers, and original-story confirmation
Deadline (July 2025), verified for the Sanders writing deal and the remake’s billion-dollar milestone
CinemaBlend (May 2025), original interview, verified for Dean Fleischer Camp’s Gantu explanation
MovieWeb (May 2025), verified for the budget, the Disney+-to-theatrical history, and the Jumba antagonist change