UPDATE: The A- audience grade wasn’t enough to save the numbers, as Deadline now projects Moana is heading for a nine-figure write-off despite the strong CinemaScore.
The audience verdict on Disney’s live-action Moana is in, and it does not match the critics. Not even close.
Opening night moviegoers handed the film an A- CinemaScore. Women graded it a straight A. The under-18 crowd went A+.
Meanwhile, with 147 reviews counted, critics on Rotten Tomatoes have it at 33 percent, the lowest score in the history of the franchise.
That is one of the widest audience-critic divides of the year, and it opened up on a weekend when almost nothing else went right for this movie.
The exit polling says the CinemaScore is no fluke.
PostTrak, the industry’s word-of-mouth yardstick, shows a 63 percent overall definite recommend. Women overall land at 70 percent. Women over 25, the heart of Dwayne Johnson’s fanbase, come in at 78 percent.
Per Deadline’s exit data, 39 percent of ticket buyers came because the movie looked fun, and another 25 percent because they love the franchise.
Snow White Got The Same Dollars And Nothing Else
Moana is opening in the $42 million to $46 million range, Snow White money almost to the dollar. The reception could not be more different.
Snow White pulled a B+ CinemaScore, a 3-star general audience grade on PostTrak, and a definite recommend of just 39 percent, as we covered on its own opening weekend. Its kids-under-12 numbers were glowing, and that revealed everything: the love stopped at the children.
Moana‘s extends to the adults who paid. Same opening weekend, opposite word of mouth.
Critics Graded A Movie. Audiences Graded Moana.
Critics savaged the remake as a shot-for-shot copy, and the first reactions called it soulless. Here is the detail that reframes all of it: per Deadline, the sameness was the plan.
Disney and director Thomas Kail deliberately avoided big swings on one of the studio’s most precious properties, adding just one new Lin-Manuel Miranda song, the end-credits track “Along the Way.”
Reinventing Moana was never in the cards, because reinventing it would have angered the exact audience the movie was built for.
So the 33 percent and the A- are grading the same creative decision. Critics punished the film for refusing to justify its own existence. The fans who showed up rewarded it for being exactly the Moana they already love. Both graders are consistent. They are answering different questions.
It is the same split we saw before release: the trailer got ratio’d on YouTube and the reviews piled on, yet the paying audience just handed the movie an A+ from the kids it was made for.
Where Is The Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score?
As of Saturday afternoon, the Popcornmeter is still blank, showing 250-plus verified ratings and no number. That is not a bug, and it is not fan silence. It is Rotten Tomatoes policy colliding with a soft opening.
Under RT’s rules, a film projected to gross $120 million or more domestically needs 500 verified ratings before its audience score displays.
Verified means RT can confirm the rater actually bought a ticket, which in practice means a Fandango purchase.
Moana‘s presales were just $4 million, and 58 percent of Friday’s business was walk-up, per Deadline, so most of the people who actually saw the movie never entered the verified pipeline at all (meaning they didn’t use the Fandango app).
The score is gated behind tentpole-sized requirements while a bomb-watch turnout fills them in slow motion.
When it does populate, likely tonight or Sunday, watch the number.
Snow White‘s fan score landed at 71 percent off that B+. An A- typically verifies far higher. And RT’s Verified Hot badge goes to any wide release with a 90 percent-plus verified score and 500-plus verified ratings.
It has gone to critic-panned films before: It Ends With Us wore the badge at 92 percent verified against a 57 percent Tomatometer. A 33 percent Rotten movie carrying Rotten Tomatoes’ highest audience honor would be the perfect artifact of where movies are in 2026.
The A- Helps, But It Does Not Save Moana
The A- gives Moana a chance at strong legs.
Mufasa opened to $35 million in December 2024 before climbing to $252 million domestic and $716 million worldwide.
Disney will be hoping for the same run, especially with no new family competition until PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie on August 14. But the math is much worse.
With a confirmed $250 million budget and roughly $100 million more in global marketing, Moana likely needs more than $600 million worldwide to break even.
The bigger problem is that strong word of mouth only helps after people buy tickets. The Quorum showed the warning signs weeks ago: 80 percent awareness but just 49 percent interest. The audience that showed up was small and left happy. Everyone else stayed home.
Critics did not sink Moana. Timing did: the third family movie in a month, released only 19 months after Moana 2 made more than $1 billion. Disney spent $250 million faithfully recreating a movie its audience already had, and an A- cannot fix that.
