Lizzie McGuire was a Disney Channel Original Series that aired on the Disney Channel from 2001 to 2004. Its target demographic was preteens and adolescents. The TV show was created by Terri Minsky. The show's creatively offbeat, mixed media format stood out from the rest of the Disney Channel's programming of the time and, in essence, became the channel's flagship and definitive show of the early 2000s. The show's producer Stan Rogow says the visual look of the show was partly inspired by Run Lola Run. Production was completed in 2002 after the show fulfilled its 65 episode order.

Animated Lizzie was an animated character who represented the title character's inner thoughts, addressing the audience directly in the manner of a Greek chorus. The show was not the first series to use animation to reflect a live-action character's innermost thoughts. McGee and Me and Student Bodies, two syndicated program about the struggles of a cartoonist for a school newspaper, often used the artist's surrealistic caricatures of himself and his friends to visually illustrate his interior monologues. Animated Lizzie was voiced by series star Hilary Duff.

The show was completed after 65 episodes, which was reportedly a Disney policy for all of its series, although that has changed now due to the popularity and success of That's So Raven, Kim Possible, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, and Hannah Montana. Disney considered continuing the franchise in further films and a prime-time television series with Lizzie and Gordo attending high school which was to be broadcast on ABC, but the plans never took off because Duff's representatives claimed she was not being paid enough for the proposed series.