Disney’s live-action Moana remake has stumbled badly out of the gate, opening to just $43 million from 3,827 North American theatres in its debut weekend — enough for first place, but nowhere near enough for a film carrying a $250 million production budget before marketing costs. The global opening of $95 million, including $52 million overseas, fell well short of Disney’s own projections of $60 to $65 million domestic and $140 million worldwide. The result now places Moana alongside last year’s Snow White as one of the worst-performing live-action remakes in the studio’s history.
“Disney invented this live-action phenomenon based on their animated films, and they’ve had remarkable success with them,” said box office analyst David A. Gross of FranchiseRe. “But this opening isn’t close to Disney’s past remakes.” If Moana‘s theatrical run follows a trajectory similar to Snow White — which opened to $42 million and finished with $87 million domestic and $205 million global against the same $250 million budget — the studio could absorb losses approaching $100 million on the film.
Why Moana Came Too Soon
The diagnosis from both analysts and box office results is consistent: Disney moved too quickly. The original 2016 animated Moana was released just a decade ago, and the animated sequel Moana 2 — which became a billion-dollar smash — opened around Thanksgiving 2024, just 20 months before this live-action version arrived. That proximity appears to have been decisive.
“The last Moana was a smash 20 months ago, but that makes this a very brief return for a remake,” Gross said. “This story wasn’t ready to come back, and audiences are not rushing to see it.”
The live-action version was originally planned for 2025 before Disney delayed it by a year specifically to create more distance from the sequel — a distance that still proved insufficient. The broader lesson the studio is being forced to absorb is about timing. Its most successful live-action remakes — Lilo & Stitch, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast — were all based on films from the 1990s and early 2000s, giving them years of accumulated nostalgia. Properties touched too recently, or too long ago, have struggled: Snow White‘s source material was nearly 90 years old, while Moana‘s is barely a decade old.
ALSO READ: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Gets Unanimous Early Praise — Called One of His Greatest Films
A remake of Tangled — based on a 2010 film — is in development with Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel, a project whose timing will face similar scrutiny.
Directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and starring Catherine Laga’aia as Moana alongside Dwayne Johnson as demigod Maui, the film also failed to win critics. It holds a 35% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The audiences who did attend were more forgiving — an A- CinemaScore suggests genuine enjoyment from those in seats — but not enough people chose to fill those seats in the first place.
The Rest of the Weekend Chart
Minions and Monsters held well in second place with $20.5 million in its second weekend — a 45% drop from its opening — bringing its domestic total to $108 million. Toy Story 5 secured third with $18.5 million in its fourth weekend, extending its remarkable domestic run to $403.8 million and its global total to $879.1 million. The film is now firmly on track to surpass $1 billion globally and should eventually overtake Toy Story 4‘s $1.07 billion to become the highest-grossing entry in the franchise.
Horror sequel Evil Dead Burn opened fourth with $13.7 million from 3,004 theatres — below expectations but not catastrophic given Warner Bros.’ lean $20 million production budget. The film is the sixth entry in the Sam Raimi-originated franchise, following 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, which opened to $24 million and finished with $147 million globally. Warner Bros. has already committed to a seventh instalment, Evil Dead Wrath, for 2028.
A24’s comedy The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde, placed sixth with $5.7 million while expanding to 1,610 theatres. Its three-weekend total now stands at $7.3 million.
Elsewhere, Lionsgate’s Michael — the Michael Jackson biopic — crossed $1 billion at the global box office, becoming the first biopic in film history to reach that milestone. It joins Universal’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie as only the second film of 2026 to enter the billion-dollar club, with Toy Story 5 expected to follow shortly.
Moana‘s disappointing opening is the third consecutive box office underperformance of the summer following Supergirl and Minions and Monsters‘ first week, though the summer as a whole remains on track to surpass $4 billion domestically for only the second time since the pandemic. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens July 17th, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day following on July 31st — two releases expected to provide a significant reset.
Stay informed. Subscribe to the JournalTodays Newsletter for the latest box office news, Disney film coverage, and entertainment updates delivered straight to your inbox.
