‘Moana’ Live-Action Remake Is Reportedly Struggling At The Box Office Before It Even Opens
Disney has leaned on live-action remakes of its animated classics for the better part of a decade, and few of those upcoming projects carried more built-in goodwill than bringing Dwayne Johnson back as Maui in the flesh.
The studio paired that nostalgia play with newcomer Catherine Laga’aia stepping into the title role, hoping to recreate the cultural moment the 2016 original sparked nearly ten years ago.
That confidence is being tested by a genuinely crowded summer release calendar, with Universal and Illumination’s ‘Minions & Monsters’ arriving just over a week before ‘Moana‘ and Matt Damon’s ‘The Odyssey’ following close behind to eat into premium screen availability. Toy Story 5 is also dominating the box office conversation this month, leaving ‘Moana’ fighting for attention in a stretch of theatrical real estate it does not have to itself.
According to industry tracking accounts, the film’s pre-sales are lagging well behind what a project with this much built-in brand recognition would typically generate. The box office analyst account Global Box Office has reported that ‘Moana’ is keeping a weak pace in advance ticket sales and may struggle to clear even 60 million dollars domestically, with the account describing international pre-sales as performing even worse than the North American numbers.
That bearish outlook stands in noticeable contrast to more optimistic figures floating around the industry. Deadline’s three-week pre-release tracking has pegged the film for an 85 million dollar domestic opening, a number that would put it roughly in line with last year’s live-action ‘How to Train Your Dragon,’ which opened to 84.6 million dollars. Box Office Theory has landed somewhere similar, projecting a range between 75 million and 96 million dollars with a pinpoint estimate around 88 million.
Global Box Office’s numbers tell a considerably different story, having flagged weeks ago that the film was tracking to open somewhere between 50 million and 70 million dollars, a range the account has continued to stand behind as release day approaches. That gap between forecasts highlights just how unsettled the film’s box office picture remains, even with the film opening in a matter of days.
Part of the uncertainty comes down to the film’s reported budget, with most estimates placing production costs around 200 million dollars. That figure has raised eyebrows among industry watchers, given how heavily the marketing leans on visual effects, oceanic environments, and fantasy creature work that typically demands an extensive post-production pipeline.
The film also arrives at a complicated moment for Johnson’s box office track record. Black Adam failed to launch the DC franchise he had hoped to build, Amazon’s Red One struggled to justify its budget despite heavy promotion, and his awards season drama The Smashing Machine did not connect commercially either. None of that erases Johnson’s star power, but it has led some industry observers to question whether his name alone can still guarantee a hit the way it once did.
Audience fatigue with Disney’s live-action remake formula is also a factor worth considering, since recent entries have delivered wildly inconsistent results. Snow White struggled badly, while Lilo & Stitch crossed a billion dollars worldwide, showing that success in this format depends heavily on the specific property rather than the strategy itself. Whether ‘Moana’ ends up closer to one outcome or the other remains genuinely unclear even this close to release.
Despite the shaky pre-sales narrative, the film has found some traction elsewhere, with a Disney+ special look at the movie currently sitting among the platform’s most-watched titles in the United States. The streaming numbers suggest there is still meaningful curiosity around the project, even if that interest has not yet fully translated into ticket purchases.
‘Moana’ is set to open in theaters on July 10, directed by Thomas Kail and led by Johnson alongside Laga’aia, Rena Owen, John Tui, Frankie Adams, and Jemaine Clement. With Toy Story 5 still dominating multiplexes and two more major releases arriving within weeks of its debut, the film has very little room to underperform without triggering a much larger conversation about its box office fortunes.
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