UPDATE Sunday: The soft opening has hardened into a full write-off, with Deadline now pegging Disney for a projected $100 million to $125 million loss on the live-action remake.
UPDATE Saturday AM: The Saturday numbers are in via Deadline, and the audience just complicated the story. Moana finished Friday at $18 million including previews, better than yesterday’s estimate, with the weekend range ticking up to $42 million to $46 million. Still well below expectations. But look at the grades.
The CinemaScore is an A-, against a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. Women give it a straight A, the under-18 crowd an A+, and PostTrak shows a 63 percent overall definite recommend, with women over 25 at 78 percent. Singh’s Thursday night read was right: the people who actually showed up like this movie.
Compare that to Snow White, which opened in the same dollar range with a B+ CinemaScore and a 39 percent definite recommend. Same opening weekend, completely different word of mouth.
Deadline calls the whole thing a WTF moment for tracking, which had Moana as high as $70 million to $80 million just this week, and pins the shortfall on timing, plain and simple. It is the third family film in under a month, less than two years after Moana 2, with Toy Story 5 passing $404 million domestic and Minions & Monsters holding at $21 million. Families love this franchise. They just saw it. There is no urgency to rush out when Moana will still be the only fresh family title midweek and all the way to PAW Patrol on August 14.
Per Deadline, Disney dated it here on purpose, preferring to play into the storm rather than get squeezed between The Odyssey and Brand New Day on July 24 or land in Spider-Man’s August wake. Deadline also notes the paint-by-numbers approach critics hated was deliberate: no big swings on a precious IP, one new Lin-Manuel Miranda song. The A- says fans took it exactly as intended.
Two more numbers that matter. Walk-up business hit 58 percent, ahead of the 51 percent Supergirl managed on its first Friday. And premium formats are driving 37 percent of sales, 28 percent from PLFs and 9 percent from IMAX. Every one of those screens belongs to The Odyssey in six days.
Previously:
Previews plus first Friday are coming in around $17 million at 3,875 theaters, pointing to a three-day opening between $40 million and $45 million, well below the $60 million-plus Disney was hoping for.
The comparison is almost to the dollar: Snow White‘s first day, previews included, was $16.2 million on its way to a $42.2 million opening. Deadline adds that no rival studio sees Moana anywhere near a $50 million weekend.
The budget is no longer just “reported” either. Deadline has confirmed the $250 million production cost before roughly another $100 million in global P&A, and notes presales heading into the weekend sat at just $4 million, with exhibitors knocking projections down to the high $40 millions before doors even opened. The Rotten Tomatoes score now sits at 35 percent, below Snow White‘s 39.
The only path to the high end of the range is a monster family Saturday, and the family money is already spoken for: Toy Story 5 flies past $400 million this weekend while Minions & Monsters holds for a $20 million second frame. Disney’s fallback hope, per Deadline, is midweek business as the only fresh family title in the market until PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie on August 14, with The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day about to take all the oxygen.
The original story continues below.
The first hard number is in for Disney’s live-action Moana, and it lands with a thud.
The remake pulled in just over $4 million from Thursday previews, per box office watcher Jatinder Singh, who now expects an opening weekend in the high $30 million range.
Update: Deadline reports Thursday previews at $4.5M.
Three weeks ago, tracking had this movie opening to $85 million.
Singh’s note about audience reception is the one genuine positive in that post, and we will get to it, because it is the only lever Disney has left this weekend.
The Three-Week Collapse
Deadline’s three-week tracking in late June projected an $85 million domestic start. By midweek the trades had dialed that down to $60 million to $65 million.
Box Office Pro’s final forecast landed at $45 million to $55 million, and Variety reported some exhibitors and rival studios were whispering $40 million before a single preview ticket was sold.
Now the previews are counted, and even the whisper number looks generous.
None of this should surprise anyone following our tracking coverage.
The Quorum had Moana at 80 percent awareness, the highest of any film on the chart, but converted into just 49 percent interest, a number that froze a month ago and never moved.
Everyone in America knew this movie existed, but they had no interest. The share who wanted to see it stopped growing weeks ago.
As we laid out in the summer tracking roundup, that is what a bomb watch looks like before the bomb goes off.
Barely Above Snow White, Right On Top Of Supergirl
Here is where $4.5 million sits on Disney’s live-action remake ladder.
The Little Mermaid did $10.3 million in Thursday previews on its way to a $95.5 million opening. Snow White managed $3.5 million and opened to $42.2 million, a preview night we covered in real time. Dumbo did $2.6 million and started at $46 million.
Moana previewed a rounding error above Snow White. And the figure is softer than it reads. Previews started at 2 p.m., and the film is carrying the full IMAX, PLF, 3D and 4DX footprint across 3,875 theaters, all of it inflating per-ticket revenue.
Strip out the early start and the premium upcharges, and raw attendance Thursday night was uglier than the dollar figure suggests.
A high $30 million weekend would come in below Snow White‘s actual opening. It lands right around Supergirl‘s $37 million debut, the start that snowballed into a projected $244 million theatrical loss.
And the price tag makes it worse. Moana carries a reported $250 million production budget before marketing, per Variety and THR, which puts break-even north of $600 million worldwide by the standard math.
Snow White, the reigning champion of Disney remake disasters, finished at $205.7 million worldwide. Moana would need to nearly triple that just to stop losing money.
One more comp for the road: the animated original opened to $56.6 million over three days a decade ago, before ten years of ticket price inflation. Moana 2 opened to $139.7 million just 19 months ago, on its way past $1 billion.
The live-action remake is tracking to do a quarter of that.
The One Thing Going Right
Singh’s silver lining is real. The people who actually showed up Thursday seem to like the movie, and for a family film, that matters, because family films are built on Saturday and Sunday walk-up business, not Thursday night diehards.
If PostTrak and the CinemaScore come in strong tonight, the weekend stretches toward the top of the range instead of the bottom.
But we have seen this exact setup before. Snow White posted five-star PostTrak scores with kids under 12 and still opened in the low $40 millions on its way to write-off territory. Good vibes inside the theater cannot fix the problem outside it: the franchise’s lowest Rotten Tomatoes score ever and first reactions calling it a soulless copy already told general audiences this one can wait for Disney+.
Dwayne Johnson did his part on the press tour, including shutting down Variety’s race-bait edit at the premiere. Star power was never the problem.
The problem is a movie nobody asked for, arriving 19 months after the animated sequel made a billion dollars. We also saw this coming as we covered the backlash to the trailer.
The Clock Is Already Running
We will keep updating as the weekend numbers come in.
The international rollout is projected at $70 million to $75 million, which means the $130 million global launch Disney was eyeing earlier this week is likely gone too.
The calendar offers no mercy either. In exactly seven days, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey takes every IMAX and premium screen Moana is currently leaning on. Whatever this movie earns in large formats, it earns this weekend.
Disney has a live-action Tangled shooting in Spain right now. Somewhere in Burbank, somebody is looking at a $4.5 million preview number and redoing the math on that one too.
