The news that Disney’s live-action remake of Moana flopped at the box office might seem surprising, but there was an array of warning signs for this failure long before its opening weekend. The box office struggles of Masters of the Universe prove that even solid reviews and a starry cast can’t guarantee box office success in summer 2026, a season of releases that has been defined by some historic upsets.
From the underperformance of The Mandalorian and Grogu to the staggering success of Obsession and Backrooms, summer 2026 is proving entirely unpredictable at the box office. That trend was amplified this weekend as Moana’s live-action remake, which seemed like a guaranteed win for Disney, underperformed disastrously. Moana was projected to gross over $60 million in its opening weekend in North America, but the remake instead stumbled to a humbling $43 million, and its global performance was substantially more worrying.
With a gargantuan budget of $250 million, Moana needed to be a massive success for the entertainment giant. Instead, the movie became a massive Disney flop when its entire opening weekend brought in a combined global total of only $95 million. Currently, commentators estimate that Moana’s live-action remake will cost Disney over $100 million, which comes as a huge shock considering how successful its franchise predecessors were.
2016’s original animated Moana earned an impressive $687 million on a budget of $150 million, but it was the movie’s unexpected success on Disney+ that truly turbo-charged the franchise. As Moana became Disney+’s most-streamed title ever, its planned spinoff show was retooled into a theatrical sequel that arrived in November 2024. Moana 2’s box office success outdid the original movie by a wide margin, earning $1.059 billion on a budget of another budget of $150 million.
However, there were plenty of warning signs before the Moana franchise’s 2026 downfall. From its earliest marketing and trailers, the live-action Moana remake was met with an underwhelmed response as fans questioned whether it was too soon for a re-imagining. The movie’s reviews soon repeated this concern upon its release, questioning the wisdom of spending such a massive budget on a story that was only ten years old.
Since Disney’s live-action remakes have been viewed as hit or miss by reviewers for some time, Moana was met with caution by moviegoers. It didn’t help that Disney’s own Toy Story 5 was a much bigger critical success, meaning viewers had a great family-friendly alternative if they did decide to bring the kids to the theatre in July 2026. Add in The Rock’s waning influence as a box office star and the fact that Moana 2 was such a massive, ubiquitous success only 18 months ago, and the live-action remake’s failure starts to feel outright inevitable.
Facing tough summer box office competition at a time when there’s not a lot of disposable income among viewers, Moana got washed away by a crowded marketplace of critically acclaimed competitors. This doesn’t mean that Disney’s upcoming live-action remakes of Tangled and Hercules are necessarily in trouble, but the combination of Snow White’s disastrous failure in 2025 and Moana’s huge financial underperformance could mean that the company’s reliance on the formula will soon start to wane.
