{"id":577927,"date":"2026-07-10T02:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/577927\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:32:12","slug":"moana-box-office-test-for-disneys-live-action-remake-follows-moana-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/577927\/","title":{"rendered":"Moana: Box Office Test for Disney’s Live-Action Remake Follows Moana 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDwayne Johnson<\/a> and Catherine Laga\u2019aia lead Disney<\/a>\u2018s live-action Moana<\/a>, which aims to make waves in its box office<\/a> debut this weekend but could face a challenge, coming less than two years<\/a> after the latest entry in the island-centric film franchise. <\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Thomas Kail<\/a>\u2018s movie is eyeing a domestic weekend start between $60 million and $65 million with a launch spanning 3,900 theaters in North America. This is dialed back from last month, when tracking for the film \u2014 which marks the studio\u2019s latest live-action reimagining after striking it big with 2025\u2019s Lilo & Stitch<\/a> \u2014 suggested Moana\u2019s domestic weekend debut could reach as high as $75 million or above.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith a hefty production budget of $250 million, Disney will need Moana to serve as a family-friendly summer option for weeks to come. The film remakes directors John Musker and Ron Clements\u2019 2016 animated musical of the same name that introduced Johnson as the voice of demigod Maui alongside Auli\u2019i Cravalho as Moana. The movie centers on Moana teaming up with Maui to stop a curse from impacting her family\u2019s island. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe new Moana hasn\u2019t quite gone over swimmingly with the majority of critics. In his review for The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, chief film critic David Rooney wrote that \u201cthis charming new iteration stands confidently on its own,\u201d but the latest Moana holds just a 37 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating from reviewers. <\/p>\n

\n\tDisney will hope that audiences aren\u2019t suffering from franchise overload, given that Moana 2<\/a>, the animated sequel that saw the returns of Johnson and Cravalho, hit theaters in November 2024. Despite initially being conceived as a Disney+ series, the movie was a smash hit, collecting $225 million domestically<\/a> over the five-day Thanksgiving frame en route to surpassing $1 billion globally. With the original Moana having hit theaters less than a decade ago \u2014 when it scored an $82 million five-day domestic opening over Thanksgiving in 2016 and $643 global cume \u2014 this makes it the most recent Disney animated film to get the live-action treatment. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCatherine Laga\u2019aia in Moana.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWalt Disney Studios Motion Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo be honest with you, I never bought into this idea [of], \u2018You have to wait 20 years. You have you wait 30 years. It\u2019s too soon,’\u201d Johnson told THR<\/a> at this week\u2019s Moana premiere in Los Angeles. \u201cI honestly never did \u2014 and not because I\u2019m biased and I made the film \u2014 but because there\u2019s themes and values in this, in animated Moana, that could translate really well if you saw a real young girl going through it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDisney\u2019s live-action The Lion King from 2019 remains the biggest success story of the studio\u2019s reimaginings, having opened to $191 million domestically. Lilo & Stitch wasn\u2019t too far behind that<\/a> with its May 2025 opening of $146 million in North America, en route to hitting $1 billion globally. Chris Sanders, who directed the 2002 animated Lilo & Stitch and voices the titular alien, returns to helm a forthcoming live-action sequel<\/a>, while a live-action Tangled<\/a>, starring Teagan Croft and Milo Manheim, has begun production in Spain.<\/p>\n

\n\tA recent misfire for the live-action properties was Snow White, featuring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot. This one opened to $42 million domestically<\/a> in March of last year. <\/p>\n

\n\tMoana has been quite a prosperous brand for the studio. Disney touts that the property has led to more than 1.5 billion hours streamed on Disney+, in addition to selling more than 22 million toys sold and surpassing 26 billion music streams.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMaia Kealoha as Lilo in Disney\u2019s live-action Lilo & Stitch.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Disney<\/p>\n

\n\tOther family-friendly titles providing competition for the frame include Disney\u2019s Toy Story 5, which has crossed $800 million globally just ahead of its fourth weekend, and Universal\u2019s Minions & Monsters. The latter opened last weekend to the lowest domestic sum<\/a> for a title in the Despicable Me franchise. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis summer\u2019s ups and downs at the box office suggest that viewers may be more likely to gravitate to a property that has had a longer theatrical absence. DC Studios\u2019 Supergirl became one of the season\u2019s biggest misfires<\/a> when Warner Bros. released it June 26, a year after Superman landed in cinemas. Additionally, Minions & Monsters arrived two years after 2024\u2019s Despicable Me 4, which followed 2022\u2019s Minions: The Rise of Gru.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso hitting theaters in wide release is Warner Bros.\u2019 horror offering Evil Dead Burn<\/a>, the latest installment in the Evil Dead film franchise that kicked off with Sam Raimi\u2019s 1981 original. Rooney\u2019s review for THR<\/a> noted the new movie\u2019s \u201corgiastic slaughter.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tLooming on the horizon is the July 17 release of Universal\u2019s The Odyssey, with Christopher Nolan directing a star-studded cast that includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway and Lupita Nyong\u2019o. Ready to swing into theaters on July 31 is Sony\u2019s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, also starring Holland. No wide releases are scheduled for the weekend in between those two attention grabbers, giving audiences a chance to catch up on titles like Moana. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson and Catherine Laga\u2019aia lead Disney\u2018s live-action Moana, which aims to make waves in its box office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[746,246019,9867,228258,1887,8168,18,117,77593,19,17,17948,104496,244802,327,125520],"class_list":["post-577927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-animation","tag-auliu2019i-cravalho","tag-box-office","tag-catherine-lagaaia","tag-disney","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-evil-dead-burn","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lilo-and-stitch","tag-moana","tag-moana-2","tag-movies","tag-thomas-kail"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}