Moana underperformed in its opening-weekend box office.
It holds similar numbers to 2025's disaster, Snow White.
The timing of the live-action remake didn't bode well.
Moana Tanks In Opening Weekend With $43 Million
Disney's live-action riff on a popular animated outing reaped the same misfortune as 2025's Snow White.
Summary
Moana sank at the box office, earning $43 million from 3,827 North American theaters in its opening weekend. Moana also struggled overseas with $52 million for a global launch of $95 million. Heading into the weekend, Disney was projecting a $60 million to $65 million domestic debut and $140 million globally, which woudn't have reflected favourably for such a massive project.
Moana Emerges One of Disney's Biggest Duds
Disney allotted the "live-action" version of Moana a whopping $250 million budget. Moana is among the weakest for a Disney live-action refashioning of an animated classic, down there with Snow White ($42.2M) and Dumbo ($45.99M). It's also grievously bad timing, wrong date and wrong year for this take on one of Disney’s most popular animated franchises; and definitely too close to its predecessor, Moana 2, which was in theaters less than two years ago with a $1B-plus global grossing result. It’s the third family film in less than a month after the roarinf success of Toy Story 5 and Illumination/Universal’s Minions & Monsters. Both titles are stiff competition for Maui and Moana. This version of Moana has been directed by Thomas Kail and stars Catherine Laga’aia as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as the cocky demigod Maui.
Soon after Moana 2 was announced, Disney shifted Moana from June 27, 2025 to this weekend in a fatal move.
The original Moana becomes the most recent Disney animated property to be given the live-action treatment, with the first film having emerged in theaters less than a decade ago when it scored an $82 million five-day domestic opening over Thanksgiving in 2016, leading to a $643 million global cume. There's also the current wide release of Warner Bros.‘ Evil Dead Burn, which retained the No. 4 spot warm with $13.7 million domestically. Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright and Hunter Doohan star in director Sébastien Vanicek’s movie that sees the sixth title in the Evil Dead horror franchise after it kicked off with Sam Raimi’s 1981 original.
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