Disney's Live-Action Moana Opens to $40M-$45M, Far Below $60M Forecast
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- Disney's live-action Moana is tracking a $40M-$45M three-day domestic opening from 3,875 theaters, with a first Friday including $4.5M Thursday previews and afternoon estimates at $17M — well below the $60M-plus forecast and comparable to Snow White's $42.2M opening.
- Moana carries a confirmed $250M production budget plus roughly another $100M in P&A, and critics have given the Thomas Kail-directed remake a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score, lower than live-action Snow White (39%), Aladdin (57%), and Dumbo (46%).
- Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 5 is pacing to about $18M in its fourth weekend, off 40%, pushing the film past $400M domestic by Sunday; it occupies the family-audience lane that may be cannibalizing Moana's walk-up business.
- Illumination/Universal's Minions & Monsters holds second in its sophomore frame with roughly $20M, -46%, a running cume of $107.8M by Sunday, and a nine-day total of $87.7M that trails Despicable Me 4 by 47% over the same window.
- New Line's Evil Dead Burns opens to about $15M from 3,004 theaters with $2.3M in previews — $200K shy of Evil Dead Rise's $2.5M previews, which translated to a $23.5M debut for the 2023 film.
- Angel Studios' Young Washington drops 67% in its second weekend to roughly $6.3M for a $32.9M running total, while A24/Annapurna's The Invite expands widely with a $5.1M third weekend (+635%) on just $6.4M cume.
Why it matters: Disney is staring at a second live-action-remake flop of the summer after Snow White, with Moana's $250M production budget requiring outsized midweek and global business to break even — and the family box office is already crowded by Toy Story 5's $400M run and the recent Minions & Monsters opening.
