Disney’s live-action Moana opens below expectations with $45 million forecast

Disney’s live-action Moana opened to $18 million on Friday from 3,875 North American theaters, a start that puts the film on pace to finish below the $40 million to $45 million U.S. opening that tracked in the days before release. The PG-rated musical adventure, running 1 hour 55 minutes, went into theaters on July 10 with Catherine Laga‘aia as Moana and Dwayne Johnson returning as Maui.

The opening is especially telling because Disney had spent years building this version as a major franchise event. The company announced the live-action reimagining in 2023, later confirming the July 10, 2026 theatrical release and positioning Johnson alongside Laga‘aia in a familiar return to Motunui. Auli‘i Cravalho, who voiced Moana in the animated film, is serving as executive producer, tying the new release back to the property that made the original a staple of Disney’s modern catalog.

That original 2016 Moana opened domestically to $56,631,401, a far stronger debut than the live-action remake’s current pace. It went on to gross $248,757,044 in North America and $684,357,500 worldwide, giving Disney a benchmark that the new film is struggling to match even before the weekend is finished. Variety’s earlier tracking had pointed to $60 million to $65 million from the same 3,875 theaters, a level that would have placed the remake only slightly above the animated film’s first domestic frame.

The contrast is sharper still against Moana 2, which opened domestically to $139,787,385 in November 2024 and crossed $1.059 billion worldwide. That performance suggested the brand still carried enormous weight with family audiences, but the live-action launch points to a different question: whether Disney’s remake formula is meeting a ceiling, whether family moviegoing has shifted, or whether a theatrical rollout is asking too much from audiences who now expect these titles to arrive quickly in streaming channels.

Deadline reported that the film’s Friday and preview total reached $18 million and that audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore, a sign that reception among moviegoers was stronger than the opening number. Even so, the gap between the pre-release outlook and the first-day result leaves Disney with a softer-than-expected launch for one of its most recognizable recent properties, and another early test of how far nostalgia can still carry a live-action remake.