Disney's live-action Moana opens this week with a US opening-weekend forecast of $50 million to $85 million. The range is already drawing scrutiny because the project is arriving only a decade after the 2016 animated film and less than a year after Moana 2 made just over $1 billion worldwide.
Dwayne Johnson in March
A trailer for the live-action Moana went online in March, and Dwayne Johnson's long, curly wig became the clip's fastest-moving joke. Weird Al Yankovic posted a photo of the bewigged Johnson with the caption, “We've told all the casting agents that the Weird Al biopic sequel is currently on hold, but they just keep sending in headshots.”
That reaction matters because this is the first version of the property Disney is sending to theaters after the 2024 return of the animated side of the franchise. Johnson is not just carrying a remake; he is carrying a movie that has to look like a fresh event after the brand already came back once.
April 2023 to early 2024
Disney officially unveiled the project in April 2023, then shifted course in early 2024 when a nearly finished Moana television series was pulled from Disney+ and rejigged as a feature film for cinemas. That left the live-action remake with a shorter runway to establish itself as something separate from the animated release cycle.
The opening forecast also sits below what Disney has been getting from its biggest remake playbook. The predicted US total is less than half of what Lilo & Stitch earned in the same period a year earlier, which is a blunt sign that the brand is not being treated as automatic money at this scale.
Tim Robey on Moana 2
Tim Robey said the remake is “I feel like [the remake] is just too soon after Moana 2.” He also said, “People didn't particularly like [Moana 2], and thought it was a kind of” before the quote cut off. His complaint gets to the business problem here: Moana 2 was the third-highest-grossing film of 2024, but its $1 billion-plus run did not create the kind of gap that usually makes a remake feel urgent.
Disney now needs this opening weekend to show that a property can still draw a major theatrical crowd even after the animated original, the 2024 sequel, and months of online ridicule around Johnson's trailer look. If the range lands closer to $50 million than $85 million, the company will have a harder case for treating fast-turnaround remakes as reliable box-office inventory.
