‘Moana’ Presales Just Cratered, and Disney’s $130M Global Opening Suddenly Looks Impossible
Disney has spent months positioning the live action version of ‘Moana‘ as a safe bet for the summer box office, banking on Dwayne Johnson’s return as Maui and the built-in nostalgia of one of the studio’s most beloved modern animated hits. That confidence carried the film all the way through its Hollywood Bowl premiere earlier this week.
The mood shifted almost immediately after that premiere, when early social media reactions from attendees turned surprisingly harsh, with several critics dismissing the film as a lifeless retread of the original. That soured reception now appears to be showing up directly in ticket sales heading into the film’s opening weekend.
According to the latest figures circulating from box office tracking accounts, ‘Moana’ has sold only around four million dollars in advance tickets after nearly a month on sale, a number that has fueled speculation the film could struggle to even reach fifty million dollars domestically. That same tracking suggests the previously reported global opening estimate of 130 million dollars may no longer be realistic, with some now questioning whether the film will even clear 100 million dollars worldwide.
That number represents a dramatic collapse from where trade estimates stood just a day earlier. Reports had placed the film’s domestic tracking in the sixty to seventy five million dollar range, with a global opening weekend forecast of roughly 130 million dollars once international numbers were factored in.
Other tracking services have shown similarly steep drops in recent days. One box office analytics firm recently lowered its domestic forecast to a range of fifty-seven to seventy two million dollars, down 23 percent from earlier projections, while pointing to a final domestic total that could land somewhere between 171 million and 210 million dollars if the film performs as expected.
The scale of that potential shortfall becomes clearer when measured against Disney’s past live-action remakes. ‘Beauty and the Beast’ opened to roughly 174.7 million dollars domestically on its way past a billion dollars worldwide, while ‘The Lion King’ debuted with 191.7 million dollars domestically before finishing above 1.6 billion dollars globally. Even a soft opening like ‘The Little Mermaid,’ which launched around 95 million dollars domestically before ultimately underperforming, would still represent a stronger start than what current tracking suggests for ‘Moana.’
Part of the challenge appears to be timing rather than pure audience interest. The live-action version arrives barely a decade after the original animated film and just two years removed from ‘Moana 2,’ which crossed the billion-dollar mark worldwide during its own record-setting release. That short gap has left less room for the kind of nostalgia-driven demand that powered earlier remakes like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Lion King.’
The film also faces an unusually crowded marketplace this summer. ‘Toy Story 5’ is still performing well in its third weekend, Illumination’s ‘Minions and Monsters’ opened just a week earlier to the franchise’s softest numbers yet, and Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ is set to take over nearly every premium format screen in the country only a week after ‘Moana’ debuts. That leaves the film with a narrow window to build any real momentum before losing both audience attention and valuable theater space.
Do you think Disney’s live-action Moana can still become a box office hit?
None of this guarantees a disastrous overall run, since family audiences have historically shown up gradually for these kinds of films rather than rushing out on opening weekend. Still, with a reported production budget north of 200 million dollars, a soft start puts significant pressure on the film’s ability to turn a profit once marketing costs are factored in.
Whether these dire presale numbers translate into an equally rough opening weekend or whether family audiences show up in bigger numbers than the tracking suggests will become clear once actual ticket sales are reported this weekend.
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