Disney's Live-Action Moana Tracking $40M-$45M Opening, Far Below $60M
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- Disney's live-action Moana is tracking a $40M–$45M three-day U.S. opening, with afternoon Friday/preview estimates of about $17M across 3,875 theaters — far short of the $60M+ the studio had hoped for and on par with Snow White's $42.2M debut.
- Moana carries a $250M production cost before global P&A, higher than Dwayne Johnson's Red One ($200M) and Red Notice, meaning the film's break-even path is steep given its domestic ceiling.
- Critics have walloped the Thomas Kail-directed film with a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score, lower than live-action Snow White (39%), Dumbo (46%) and Aladdin (57%).
- Thursday previews came in at $4.5M, ahead of Snow White ($3.5M) and Dumbo ($2.6M) but well behind Little Mermaid ($10.3M), Aladdin ($7M) and Moana 2's $13.8M Tuesday previews that fueled a $139.7M opening less than two years ago.
- Presales sat at just $4M heading into the weekend, with exhibitor projections already cut from the studio's low-$60M target to the high-$40Ms before Friday's numbers confirmed the slide.
- The family box office is crowded by Toy Story 5 (heading past $400M domestic by Sunday) and the second weekend of Illumination's Minions & Monsters, leaving little room for a Moana walk-up rebound.
Why it matters: A $40M–$45M opening against a $250M production budget puts Moana on track to need every midweek dollar, international market and ancillary window just to approach break-even — and it crystallizes how little audience appetite exists for a live-action Moana arriving less than two years after Moana 2's $139.7M Thanksgiving launch. For Disney, the result reframes the live-action remake strategy: the theatrical ceiling for these remakes is now demonstrably closer to Snow White's $42.2M than Little Mermaid's $95.5M.
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