Disney’s live-action Moana is officially a flop. The $250 million remake opened to just $43 million domestically and $95 million worldwide — numbers so far below projections that analysts now expect the studio to lose somewhere between $100 million and $125 million on the film. For context, Disney originally hoped for a $75 million domestic opening. It didn’t get close to even its revised expectations.
So with the wayfinder taking on water, the obvious question: is the just-announced Moana 3 in trouble?
Short answer: no. Here’s why.
It’s tempting to lump the whole franchise together, but the numbers tell two completely different stories. The animated Moana films are among the most valuable properties Disney owns. The 2016 original earned $687 million theatrically and then became the most-watched title in Disney+ history. Moana 2 — a movie famously stitched together from a scrapped streaming series — crossed $1 billion worldwide in 2024 despite mixed reviews, opening to a Thanksgiving-record $225 million.
Mixed reviews, billion dollars. Audiences have made their position on animated Moana abundantly clear.
That’s why Dwayne Johnson felt comfortable confirming, just before the remake’s release, that Moana 3 is in development at Walt Disney Animation with franchise writers Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller returning. It would make Moana only the second Disney Animation property after Frozen to earn a theatrical trilogy.
What actually failed here
The live-action remake didn’t fail because people are tired of Moana. It failed because Disney asked families to pay theater prices for a story they’d seen — beautifully — less than a decade ago, and can stream any night of the week. Critics savaged it (33% on Rotten Tomatoes), though notably, audiences who did show up liked it, giving it an A- CinemaScore and a 90% audience rating. The problem wasn’t the product. It was the premise.
If anything is in trouble, it’s Disney’s live-action remake pipeline. Coming off Snow White‘s collapse last year, Moana‘s failure raises hard questions about the Tangled remake already in the works. Remaking movies from the ’90s (Aladdin, The Lion King, Lilo & Stitch) banks on a generation’s nostalgia. Remaking a movie from 2016 banks on nothing.
The bottom line
Moana 3 will need to prove the mixed reception of Moana 2 was a fluke of its rushed, series-to-movie origins — this one gets a real development runway, and that matters. But in trouble? Not remotely. The ocean keeps calling, and a billion dollars says audiences keep answering. Just not for remakes.
