The animated Walt Disney musical Moana tells the story of a young girl named—you guessed it—Moana (Auli‘i Cravalho), the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain, who sets out to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in the hopes of saving her people. Or, that’s at least how somebody from the U.S. would explain the basics of the film. People living in Italy, on the other hand, know the movie and its lead character by totally different names. Over there, Disney released the film as Oceania, and Moana is known as Vaiana.
Why the changes, you ask? Disney has never given an official reason, but that hasn’t stopped word from getting around. As it turns out, there was once a well-known adult film actress in Italy by the name of Moana Pozzi, who The New York Times once referred to as the country’s “most revered porn star.”
According to them, Pozzi was “as popular with hormonally charged young men as with devout grandmothers.”
The Adult Film Star Who Reportedly Forced Disney to Rename ‘Moana’ in Italy
Shortly after Moana was released, The Telegraph reported that the film’s directors confirmed Pozzi “played a big part in the decision.” They were evidently asked about the name change at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Davide Romani, Disney’s head of theatrical marketing in Italy, appears to have verified that claim around the same time. As he tells it, the company had been discussing the issue during a meeting with Italian exhibitors the previous year.
An Italian marketing expert, who didn’t wish to be identified, told Fox that there were two reasons for the title change. “One is that if you type ‘Moana’ and do a Google search in Italy, you risk coming up with porn videos. And it’s very expensive and a waste of money to try and change that.”
The other reason, the marketing executive explained, was that “in any Italian focus group, ‘Moana’ is Moana Pozzi the porn star.”
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