UPDATE July 8: Fitting with the soft tracking, the first reactions to Moana are not good. Dwayne Johnson also avoided a race-baiting question by Variety. And the Rotten Tomatoes Score is just as bad.
Disney’s live-action Moana opens Friday with projections falling fast. Box Office Pro has pulled its forecast down to $60 million to $70 million, and some trackers have gone lower still, with Global Box Office now pointing to a $45 million to $60 million range.
On a reported budget of $200 million or more before marketing, that’s not a soft opening. That’s the start of a bomb watch.
Per The Quorum’s survey data, Moana sits at 80 percent awareness, the highest of any film tracked. Its interest score is 49.
And here’s the detail that should bother Disney: across the last two tracking editions, awareness climbed from 73 to 80 while interest sat frozen at 49, posting a zero delta on the newest chart.
Everyone in America knows this movie is coming. The share of them who want to see it stopped growing a month ago.
The Quorum surveys ordinary moviegoers about upcoming films, tracking two numbers over time: awareness, meaning how many people know a movie exists, and interest, meaning how many actually want to see it. The gap between those two numbers is often where the real story hides.
For where this fits in the full summer picture, see our summer 2026 box office tracking roundup.
The Backlash Shows Up in the Data
That flatline has a backstory. The trailer was hammered with dislikes on YouTube amid criticism of Disney’s remake machine, a cycle that looked a lot like the one that has consumed The Odyssey. But the two backlashes leave opposite fingerprints in the tracking.
Nolan’s film has a reach problem: only 50 percent awareness, but everyone who knows it exists wants in, with interest matching awareness point for point.
Moana has the reverse: maximum reach, capped desire. It converts 80 awareness into 49 interest, the weakest ratio of any tentpole on the chart, well behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s 76-into-68.
One cautionary tale worth remembering: the previous Quorum chart had Supergirl at 69 percent awareness with climbing deltas days before it opened to $37 million and the excuses started flying.
Awareness measures who’s heard of you. It doesn’t buy tickets. And industry watchers are already drawing the direct parallel between Moana‘s tracking slide and Supergirl’s.
The Real Fight Is for Family Dollars
Moana‘s opening-weekend battle isn’t with Evil Dead Burn, which opens the same day but serves an entirely different audience in the R-rated lane.
The real competition is the family congestion: Toy Story 5, off a $159.6 million opening and an A CinemaScore, is still commanding its audience in a fourth weekend, and Minions & Monsters hits its second frame.
Three family tentpoles splitting one audience is a big part of the slide, and the comps have gone from unflattering to ugly.
Every current forecast has Moana opening below The Little Mermaid‘s $95.5 million and Aladdin‘s $91.5 million, and nowhere near Lilo & Stitch‘s $146 million record start.
Dwayne Johnson’s return as Maui and the sing-along factor are the draws Disney is counting on to break the interest ceiling.
Then there’s the math underneath. With a reported $200 million-plus production budget, the standard break-even estimate puts Moana needing roughly $500 million worldwide before marketing costs, a bar The Little Mermaid itself barely cleared at $570 million and was still considered a disappointment.
The shadow over all of it is Snow White, which finished at $205.7 million worldwide and redefined what a Disney remake bomb looks like.
One more asset with an expiration date: Moana gets the full IMAX and premium-format footprint on opening weekend, and exactly one week later The Odyssey takes every one of those screens.
The Weekend Tells Us Which Number Was Real
If Moana beats its falling forecasts, the 80 awareness did its job, the family brand held, and the slide was tracking noise.
If it lands inside the current range against three-way family competition and a month of frozen want-to-see, the trailer backlash graduates from YouTube ratio to box office line item, and Disney has a $200 million remake opening below every comp that was supposed to justify it.
The numbers land this weekend, and we’ll have them.
