Moana Live-Action Remake Drowns With Box Office Debut That's Almost As Low As 2025's Snow White

Moana is sinking rather than swimming at the box office during its opening weekend.

2026's Moana is Disney's live-action remake of one of their animated films, specifically the 2016 movie of the same name. Their live-action remakes peaked in 2019 with The Lion King, which grossed $1.662 billion and is currently the 12th highest-grossing movie of all time. However, the movies have been hot and cold at the box office since then, with their most recent title - 2025's Lilo & Stitch - making $1 billion and earning an upcoming sequel, though it came in the wake of the controversy-laden Snow White, which collapsed with $205.7 million against a reported budget of more than $270 million.

Per Deadline, Moana is projected to earn a 3-day total between $42 and $46 million at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This is considerably below its already lukewarm original projections of $60 million, and sees the movie landing too close to Snow White's domestic debut of $42.2 million for comfort.

Unless the movie proves to be a sleeper hit, this result could reveal that, while Lilo & Stitch was a hit that remade a movie from just 23 years earlier, waiting just 10 years for a live-action remake might have been too small of a window. The animated Moana is still a vibrant, ongoing franchise, with the billion-dollar hit Moana 2 having debuted in theaters less than two years before the remake.

However, it's possible that Moana is simply being hit by the diminishing returns that have impacted many of Disney's live-action remakes post-2019 as the box office has slowly recovered after COVID-19-related shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. Below, see a breakdown of the box office performance of the Disney live-action remakes to receive domestic theatrical releases since the debut of The Lion King:

The live-action remake's reported budget of $250 million puts a lot of pressure on the Moana box office. Because Hollywood tentpoles often need to earn back two and a half times their production budgets, this could place its estimated break-even point as high as $625 million, which is potentially catastrophic given the movie's debut performance. Even if it had the same trajectory as the smash hit Lilo & Stitch (which is an unlikely prospect in the first place), it would still earn less than $400 million worldwide by the end of its run.

To put Moana's risky production budget into perspective, the weekend's other new release - the horror sequel Evil Dead Burn - is projected to have a quiet debut of $15 million that sees it premiering at No. 4 behind Moana, Minions & Monsters, and Toy Story 5. However, the horror movie reportedly cost just $20 million, so it should be on track to make its money back and then some by the end of its run.

The future of Disney live-action remakes of contemporary titles after Moana could be determined by the performance of the upcoming live-action remake of Tangled, which is currently in production. The original Tangled debuted in 2010, giving the remake about half a decade more distance. Additionally, Tangled never received a sequel, so the remake will arrive more than 16 years after the most recent theatrical installment, potentially allowing for more nostalgia to have been built up in the meantime than the roughly two years since Moana 2.

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Release Date July 10, 2026

Runtime 120 Minutes

Director Thomas Kail

Writers Dana Ledoux Miller, Jared Bush