This past week, we asked the question: Is there such a thing as too much “Moana?” Audiences around the world answered that question at the box office this weekend with a distinct “yes,” as Disney’s remake of its 2016 animated hit could not catch a wave with an opening weekend of just $43 million domestic and $95 million worldwide.
Heading into the weekend, both Disney insiders and theatrical sources told TheWrap they did not expect this remake starring Dwayne Johnson and Catherine Laga’aia to meet its $70 million projections from independent trackers, but “Moana” failed to meet even lower expectations. Disney had projected a domestic opening in the $60 million range, while exhibition sources said they projected an opening closer to $50 million.
Instead, “Moana” is barely outperforming the $42.7 million domestic/$87.3 million global opening of Disney’s spring 2025 remake bomb “Snow White,” which made just $205.6 million worldwide. There’s still a chance for “Moana” to do better than that as families, particularly those with kids under 12, have given the film better scores than “Snow White” with an A- on CinemaScore and 91% Rotten Tomatoes audience score.
For that core demo among this depleted audience, “Moana” will be the freshest family-friendly offering for the next two weekends until “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” comes out at the end of the month, while Universal’s “The Odyssey” is expected to sweep up general audiences. Legging out just with families in that brief time might get “Moana” past $300 million worldwide, but not far enough to make it a theatrical success.
While family turnout is the core of Disney’s century of box office success, the biggest hits in the studio’s publicly maligned but financially lucrative remake series have achieved success by taking stories firmly placed in Disney’s past and bringing in some sort of new twist, be it through a new visual style (“The Lion King”) or a splashy A-list casting (“Aladdin”) to build a globally following. “Moana” had neither.
Timing may have been at fault here, experts told TheWrap, with “Moana” arriving in close proximity to the release of not only the original, but also a successful sequel. But the floundering of this live-action take may be cause for Disney to reassess its the strategy around its remake series, especially as the well of classics it has mine from since “Alice in Wonderland” in 2010 is starting to run dry.
“Disney bet on a film that was 10 years away from being needed by the studio or wanted by audiences. The incubation period just wasn’t long enough,” said Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “The thought was that the property was hot enough that people who saw the two animated films in theaters would come back for a third round, but the spacing just wasn’t enough.”
The “Lilo & Stitch” crowd was absent
Let’s go back a year to Disney’s remake of “Lilo & Stitch,” a film with a CGI Stitch, a 9-year-old Hawaiian girl as Lilo, and reception that included mildly positive returns from critics, rave scores from families and the usual online vitriol. Despite the latter, it became one of three $1 billion-plus box office hits that Disney released that year, while the rest of Hollywood’s studios combined for zero.
How did it get to a billion? Through the power of millennial nostalgia. Yes, families were vital as always, but the enormous turnout from adults for “Lilo & Stitch” wasn’t confined to parents. On the film’s Memorial Day opening weekend, a whopping 65% of the audience came from the 18-35 demographic, the age cohort with fond childhood memories of seeing the original “Lilo & Stitch” in 2002.
As we noted in our box office preview, this “Moana” remake does not have the advantage of time. While “Lilo & Stitch” came out more than two decades ago, as did “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” at the time of their remakes’ releases, “Moana” is coming out just 10 years after the release of the film it is based on. Disney took a roll of the dice, greenlighting this remake with a shorter time gap in the hopes that the prospect of seeing the 54-year-old Dwayne Johnson reprising his role of Maui in live action form would be a ticket seller.
But eight months after that remake had been announced by Johnson, Disney, under the direction of then-CEO Bob Iger, made the announcement that its planned “Moana” streaming series was being repurposed into a theatrical sequel, taking advantage of the original film’s overwhelming popularity on Disney+. Of course, it paid off, setting a Thanksgiving weekend record and crossing $1 billion worldwide.
But the sequel’s popularity likely siphoned off interest in this remake. Between the recent release of the sequel and the presence of “Moana” on streaming, at toy stores and on school backpacks, and its arrival at the theme parks, the masses can get all the Moana and Maui they could want from places besides the movie theater.
And while Will Smith as Genie was a selling point for 2019’s “Aladdin,” Dwayne Johnson’s box office drawing power has been diminished in recent years with duds like “Black Adam” and “The Smashing Machine.”
Is the Disney remake era nearing its end?
When “Snow White” crashed out quickly last year, there was hope among the remake haters that it was a sign that the audience at large had finally turned its back on the series and would get Disney to shelve it for good. “Lilo & Stitch” quickly disproved that.
But the Disney remakes may be coming to an end not because “Moana” is struggling, but because the well of beloved films the studio can tap into is close to running out. The next film to get the remake treatment will be the 2010 fantasy “Tangled,” directed by “The Greatest Showman” filmmaker Michael Gracey and starring “Titans” lead Teagan Croft, Disney Channel star Milo Manheim and beloved Kathryn Hahn.
While a release date has not been announced, the “Tangled” remake is reportedly looking at a 2028 launch. With an 18-year gap from the original and no animated feature sequels to dilute interest, that is firmly within the nostalgia window that remakes need to thrive, so the ceiling for that film will be much higher than “Moana.”
But what comes after that? The pandemic hit “Encanto” is even more recent of a release than “Moana,” and the 2014 film “Big Hero 6” doesn’t have any famous musical numbers or interludes like “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” from “Lilo & Stitch.”
2000s Disney films like “The Princess and the Frog,” “Treasure Planet,” and “The Emperor’s New Groove,” while all having fandoms of their own, probably don’t have the global support needed to support a remake with a tentpole budget. Even if Disney had the temerity to expand its remake scope to Pixar, the non-human nature of the characters from the majority of that studio’s canon reduces the potential targets to a precious few like “Brave” and “Coco.”
So that leaves the crown jewel of Disney’s 2010s cultural domination: “Frozen.” With a third animated film set for release in 2027 that is almost assuredly set to join its two predecessors in the $1 billion club, the worldwide love for Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Olaf is as strong as it was when the original released in 2013. If there were no sequels to “Frozen” as is the case for “Tangled,” it would be almost certain that Disney would announce a remake soon.
But if there is any lesson that Disney should learn from this poor start for “Moana,” it is that patience is a virtue. Releasing a “Frozen” remake any time in the next five years with “Frozen III” already on the way would be a big mistake. In fact, back in 2024, Iger and “Frozen” songwriter Kristin Anderson-Lopez both confirmed that along with “Frozen III,” a fourth animated installment has been in the early works, meaning that fans will get plenty of Arendelle, possibly into the 2030s.
With “Let It Go” standing as the most popular Disney song of the 21st century, it seems almost inevitable that someday, somehow, a remake of “Frozen” will happen, especially when the kids of the 2010s become the nostalgic thirty-somethings of the future in roughly a decade from now.
But as “Moana” demonstrated, releasing that remake in close proximity to even an animated sequel of “Frozen” might get roundly rejected by audiences who already got their fill of the franchise from its original animated form.
“Finish the story in animation, then wait, then do the remake,” Bock said succinctly.
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