When the plans to develop a live-action version of Lilo & Stitch were first revealed, the usual scrutiny one can expect following the announcement of a CGI remake was turned to high beams. The nearly 23-year-old animated original is an enduring favourite every which way you slice it – whether for its wholesome and hard-earned message of ohana, Stitch’s unhinged, scene-stealing antics, its Elvis-forward soundtrack, or the dreamy vision of island life on Kaua'i brought to life by an all-star crew of Disney animators. Needless to say, this refresh had big shoes to bring into the real world of 2025.
For Oscar-nominated director Dean Fleischer Camp of Marcel the Shell with Shoes fame, that the movie would be shot on location was never a question. From the epic waves that beckon Lilo, Stitch, and company to catch the surf to the fire-dancing luau stage, the Pelakai house framed by luscious canopy to the beachside resort Lilo regularly sneaks into to partake in the five-star amenities, all the world’s a sound stage in Lilo & Stitch. Here, Condé Nast Traveller catches up with Camp to talk about capturing Hawaii as a destination beautiful enough to convince an intergalactic coalition to think twice before destroying the Earth.
Where did you film in Hawaii? And why was it important for the movie to be filmed on location?
It was super important. I don't think it was even really much of a question. We all felt like, we definitely needed to shoot 100 per cent of it in Hawaii. The original takes place in Kaua'i, and for kind of boring logistical reasons, that was deemed impossible, but Oahu had all of the infrastructure needed to make a movie this size. We were so dedicated to shooting it all in Hawaii because, there's just not really a substitute for it.
I felt like if we're going to do a deep dive to try to really ground the characters in this world and in the lived experience of growing up in Hawaii, then it's not just about rolling cameras on that location. It's also about having your your office and your prep and all of your prep production, all of that, and even half the writing taking place on the island, with all of us living on the island because that is constantly informing the type of story we were telling. From the details to the sense of humour, and all these things I think, appear on screen as authentically as they do because we made the commitment to actually be in the place.
Additionally, I also give a ton of credit to all of our cultural consultants, and our writer, Chris Bright, who is Hawaiian and whose mother actually worked on the original Lilo & Stitch, which we found out later. One example that pops to mind is Amy Hill's character Tutu, who is actually a creation of Chris, because he felt like the in real Hawaii, culture is such that if these sisters really lost their parents, they would have a community of people who were pitching in, trying to the support them, and who really open up that idea of wider ohana support.
How did you scout for the Pelakai family home and, more broadly, Lilo and Nani’s neighbourhood?
Our location scout Amira and her team did an excellent job finding locations, many of which really haven't been shot before. And anyone who's been to Hawaii knows that, it is just chock full of amazing places.
Early on, we were passionate about wanting to depict not just the postcard view of Hawaii, but also what our director of photography at one point described as the, “back of the amusement park.” What is the lived experience? What is the back of the postcard? The lived experience might not be so dressed up and sunlit. We wanted to show the actual day-to-day of people who might work at a luau, what it's like to go home to their neighbourhood. So we always challenged ourselves to not just show the things people have seen, the rainbow and the sun.
The neighbourhood spot that we found is a part of Kualoa Ranch, which is known for movie sets and Jurassic Park, but it's on a part that's actually one of the manager's homes. He was showing us around in the different areas they thought might work, but in the end, we felt like we just hadn't found a place that felt lived in. Though they were all beautiful, they didn't have that right texture and feel to them, and then he was like, “I gotta talk to my wife, but I'll show you one more place.” And then we arrive at his actual neighbourhood, where he lives. His house is actually what stands in for the next-door neighbour's house. Then in front of it, we built the Pelakai house, and that was all built on location, at least the exteriors. From there, we didn't look for any more backdrops; I just left those wide establishing shots that have the mountains in the background, and it's gorgeous.
How did you recreate venues like the resort and the fire dancing stage at the luau?
Hawaii does provide an incredibly fun, postcard view, so it actually wasn't that hard to find resorts and luaus that fit the bill. The luau, for example, was actually a real luau called Germaine's, and I think we just changed the name to Jimmy's in the film and dressed it up a little differently and all that. But Germaine's provided everything we needed to look like an absolutely gorgeous tourist hotspot, Louis Island, you know, it's right on the beach. It was so gorgeous to shoot there. Geographically, we basically kept everything exactly as it already existed.
Which beaches were featured in the film?
You have to balance a lot of different things in a beach scene, so there's the aesthetic of the opening scene that keeps with that idea of that back in the postcard feeling when we first are introduced to Lilo: she steps out onto a very touristy beach, and we kind of see her navigating, one step ahead of the red line, and then then it quickly dissolves as if she makes her way to her hula performance, and it cuts to kind of increasingly more remote and more residential areas of Oahu.
There are three or four main beaches in the film, and they all kind of require something different. There are the touristy reefs that Lilo surfaces on, then there are the beaches that Nani surfs on during “Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride,” and for that, we wanted a place that was a little bit more remote, not the hyper-touristy one that has all the big hotels on it. Then there's the third, which is more in the North Shore area, and I believe that no one had ever shot anything on that beach before. Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but it's where the final scenes take place in the film. We loved it because it looks so different than the other beaches. It's got these really dramatic lava formations and sharp black rocks jutting out of the sand – it just felt like a totally different look, and we were trying to take the movie to a place that we hadn't seen before.
There was something I loved that isn't necessarily in the film overtly, but it's something Chris talked a lot about, that relates the aliens' disdain for Earth in a way stems from how they view it as prehistoric, and how life on this planet is just like, “Oh, it's just cavemen down there, and it's dangerous.” For them, they're just out in the boonies, and I love that while they disdain it and look down on it because they're so, “sophisticated,” they also eat it, and it's so bursting with life and the chaos that comes with it. They're all about control, and Stitch happens to touchdown on this place that they think is prehistoric and unruly. It just seemed like such a beautiful, full circle thing, like yes, the Earth is chaotic and messy and wild, but it's also the seed of of life and all these different life-giving things.
Are there any locations that viewers might find surprising?
I think the place where the Pelakai family's house exists was an incredible piece of land, and people might think that we, created that seat in the mountains with CG, but that's all real. I think people would be surprised by that fact, and with any other movie, production might be like, “Oh, let's put a big volcano back there,” when in fact with ours, the problem was the opposite – sometimes you'd have to take some parts of the background out.
This article was first published on Condé Nast Traveler.