“Moana” failed to make a splash at the box office, grossing $43 million in 3,827 North American theaters in its opening weekend.

Those ticket sales, while enough to take the No. 1 spot on the box office charts, are disastrous given that the live-action remake of “Moana” has a massive $250 million production budget, and that’s before Disney’s heavy marketing spending. Arriving in theaters a decade after the original 2016 animated musical and less than two years after the sequel, “Moana” underscores how complicated the moment is in terms of Disney’s live-action remakes. Expect too much, a la “Snow White” and “Dumbo,” and there isn’t enough cultural resonance; It goes too soon and there isn’t enough nostalgia to bring audiences back to theaters to see something they’ve seen before (and can easily watch on Disney+).

“Moana” also flopped overseas with $52 million for a $95 million global launch.

“Disney invented this live-action phenomenon based on its animated films and has had remarkable success with them,” says David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe. “But this release doesn’t come close to Disney’s previous remakes.”

Heading into the weekend, Disney was projecting a domestic debut of between $60 million and $65 million and $140 million worldwide, which would have already been difficult for a store of this size. After missing estimates, “Moana” now competes with 2025 box office bomb “Snow White” ($42 million in debut) for the unfortunate distinction of lowest opening among Disney live-action remakes. “Snow White,” an adaptation of a nearly 90-year-old film, left the big screen with $87 million domestically and $205 million worldwide, against a budget of $250 million. With a similar box office, “Moana” could lose around $100 million for the studio in its theatrical run.

For the most part, Disney has been quite successful with live-action remakes of its animated classics. The studio’s adaptations of 2025’s “Lilo & Stitch,” 2019’s “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” and 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast” were huge, each debuting above $100 million and eventually crossing the $1 billion mark. They were based on movies from the ’90s and early ’00s, which seems to be the sweet spot for Disney. A remake of 2010’s “Tangled” is in the works with Kathryn Hahn as the villainous Mother Gothel.

“Moana” is much newer to the Disney canon, and although the musical franchise is very popular with families with young children, the studio may have rushed to revisit the ocean world of Moana, a brave wayfinder chosen by the ocean to restore prosperity to her island. Critics snubbed the live-action version of “Moana,” which has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, although audiences in attendance were satisfied and gave the film an “A-” grade in CinemaScore exit polls.

This version of “Moana,” directed by Thomas Kail (“Hamilton”) and starring Catherine Laga’aia as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as the cocky demigod Maui, was released especially close to the animated sequel, which became a billion-dollar hit. That was not intentional. “Moana 2” was originally developed as a television series before Disney opted to turn the project into a feature film. Once the sequel moved to film, Disney delayed the live-action project by a year (it was originally scheduled for 2025) to put some distance between the sequel, which was released around Thanksgiving 2024.

“The last ‘Moana’ was a hit 20 months ago, but that makes this a very short comeback for a remake,” Gross says. “This story was not ready to return and the public is in no hurry to see it.”

“Moana” is the third straight big-screen disappointment, following “Supergirl” and “Minions & Monsters,” in what has otherwise been a standout summer season for Hollywood. The four-month period is about to surpass $4 billion for the second time since the pandemic and appears to be the largest since 2019, a banner year for the industry. Attendance should rebound with the release of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” on July 17 and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” on July 31.

“Moana” faced competition from two major family franchises: “Minions and Monsters” from Universal and Illumination, as well as “Toy Story 5” from Disney and Pixar.

Second place went to “Minions and Monsters” with $20.5 million in 4,244 theaters in its second weekend, a decline of 45% since its debut. So far, the “Despicable Me” spinoff has generated $108 million domestically.

“Toy Story 5”, one of the biggest hits of the summer, secured third place with $18.5 million in its fourth installment. It has grossed an impressive $403.8 million in North America and $879.1 million worldwide to date, putting it on track to surpass $1 billion. “Toy Story 5” should surpass its predecessor, 2019’s “Toy Story 4” ($1.07 billion), as the highest-grossing entry in the beloved franchise.

More to come…