Box Office: ‘Moana’ Flounders With $43 Million Debut, Among Weakest of Disney’s Live-Action Remakes
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- Moana opened to $43 million from 3,827 North American theaters, enough for #1 but far below Disney's pre-weekend projection of $60-65 million domestic and $140 million globally.
- Moana earned $52 million overseas for a $95 million global launch, trailing the studio's $140 million global forecast against a $250 million production budget.
- The opening now competes with 2025's Snow White ($42M debut) for the lowest launch of any Disney live-action remake; Snow White ended its run at $87M domestic and $205M global, and Moana could lose roughly $100 million on a similar trajectory.
- The 2016 animated original was followed by a $1 billion-grossing sequel just 20 months ago at Thanksgiving 2024 — FranchiseRe's David A. Gross said 'this story wasn't ready to come back' — though Disney delayed the remake by a year specifically to create distance.
- Critics rejected the remake with a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score, but opening audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore exit grade, a split that Deadline's headline surfaces prominently while most other coverage buries it.
- Disney's billion-dollar remakes — The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and Lilo & Stitch — were all built on '90s and early-2000s properties, a nostalgia gap the 2016 Moana cannot replicate; a Tangled remake with Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel is now in development.
Why it matters: Disney's live-action-remake engine — responsible for four $1 billion-plus hits — is breaking when applied to properties too recent to trigger nostalgia: Moana (2016) and Snow White (1937) have now produced the two weakest remake openings in the slate, with Moana on pace to lose roughly $100 million theatrically. With Tangled next in line and overseas grosses also missing projections, the studio's formula faces its first sustained run of unprofitable tentpoles.
