Live-Action ‘Moana’ Underperforms at the Box Office

We have answered the question of how far Moana will go.

Answer: Not as far as expected.

Despite its connection to one of the most popular animated movies of the 21st century — and the presence of one of the animated version’s big stars — 2026’s live-action remake of Moana sank to the bottom of the box-office ocean over the weekend. According to estimates, the film earned approximately $43 million in its first three days of release.

Previously, experts predicted the film would earn at least $60 million over the weekend, with some predictions suggesting it could earn well above that. Instead, its $43 million is a fair amount under the $56.6 million the original animated Moana earned in its opening weekend a decade ago, and barely a third of what Moana 2 took in during its debut in theaters back in 2024. That film did an astounding $139.7 million in its opening weekend.

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Those who did see Moana in theaters seemed to enjoy it; they gave the film a solid A- rating on CinemaScore. And it did earn $52 million in international theaters. But there’s no way this was the outcome that Disney wanted.

Why did the movie struggle in theaters? To me, there are two obvious reasons. One: Moana came out just 10 years ago — and Moana 2 came out just two years ago! — way sooner than is typical on Disney’s live-action remake schedule. (Years between Cinderellas: 65. Years between Pete’s Dragons: 39 years. Even Lilo & Stitch was 23 years.) Moana is still comparatively fresh in everyone’s minds, and that’s not even considering the fact that it’s available whenever kids want to watch it on Disney+.

The other major factor: Competition. For the first time in quite a while, families actually have a lot of options to choose from in theaters. Toy Story 5 came out less than a month ago and Minions & Monsters debuted just last weekend. That family audience got split three ways last weekend, and a lot of those folks decided they could wait on Moana.

Does this affect Disney’s plans to make more live-action remakes? I doubt it. They’re already making one of Tangled, which is only a few years older than Moana. The animated version of that story opened in theaters in 2010.