Disney’s live-action Moana is heading for a nine-figure write-off.
Deadline reports the remake will lose between $100 million and $125 million in its first cycle after a $95 million worldwide opening, including $43 million domestic and $52 million overseas.
The projection assumes Moana still reaches $250 million worldwide, with Deadline describing its sources as conservative.
Unlike Snow White, there is no controversy to blame. That remake opened to $87 million worldwide. Moana beat it by just $8 million despite scoring 182 million trailer views in its first 24 hours.
Awareness was never the problem, exactly as the Quorum numbers told us for a month. The franchise has sold 22 million toys, generated 26 billion music streams, and logged 1.5 billion hours watched on Disney+. Everyone knew. Nobody came.
The Math And The Date
Deadline confirms a $250 million production cost and an estimated $145 million global marketing spend, putting roughly $395 million out the door before theaters take their cut.
Dwayne Johnson received his standard $20 million-plus upfront, while his backend bonuses are now out of reach.
The trade compares it to Supergirl, which cost a net $170 million and still produced a projected $244 million theatrical loss. At $250 million, Moana had no room to miss.
The weekend delivered another warning. Family movies usually grow on Saturday, but Moana fell from $18 million on Friday to $13.5 million on Saturday. The overall marketplace ran 38 percent behind the same frame last year, when Superman powered a $201.1 million weekend.
The remake also arrived just 19 months after Moana 2 grossed a billion dollars, as the third family film released in under a month. It then lost Mexico and Brazil to Disney’s own Toy Story 5.
One veteran film finance source told Deadline that with Moana 2 and Toy Story 5 already in play, Disney considering a 2026 release date “blows my mind.”
Disney reportedly avoided the open July 24 weekend because it did not want to sit between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and it did not want August. Instead, it released Moana into an overcrowded family market.
Audiences Liked It Anyway
The marketing did not give audiences a reason to choose this version over the animated movie.
RelishMix found social chatter focused on why the remake existed, along with complaints about the heavy CGI, muted color grading, and visuals compared to AI-generated content and big-budget sketch parody. We covered that backlash when the trailer dropped.
Deadline also rejects the blame-shifting. Director Thomas Kail was Johnson-approved. Former Disney film chief Sean Bailey greenlit the package but was gone by February 2024, while David Greenbaum oversaw production. The failure comes down to the date and the pitch.
The twist is that ticket buyers liked the movie. It earned an A- CinemaScore and a 90 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score, above the animated Moana at 89 and Moana 2 at 85. Combined with its 33 percent critics score, it created the widest audience-critic divide of the summer.
Disney’s remaining hope is an audience that skews two-thirds female and no new family competition until PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie on August 14. The projected $100 million to $125 million loss already assumes those legs arrive.
This was Disney’s control group: beloved IP, no controversy, huge awareness, the biggest star in the world, and satisfied audiences. It still loses nine figures.
Snow White could be blamed on the noise. Moana can only be blamed on the model, with a live-action Tangled already shooting in Spain.
