Why did Disney sabotage the ‘Moana’ franchise?

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Live-action Moana remake threatens to drown the entire franchise

The live-action Moana remake hits theaters this weekend. And things are looking bad.

Early reactions went live on Wednesday, with critics calling the remake a “soulless, miserable financial decision,” “soulless and inauthentic” and “one of the ugliest movies of the year.” “Producing slower and uglier versions of movies we’ve already seen is solidifying as Disney’s core business,” The AV Club’s Jacob Oller wrote, “and if Moana still manages to be disappointing, it’s because the source material is just that good.”

In a piece titled “Please Stop,” Vulture’s Alison Willmore exposed what’s rotten at the core of these remakes: “Most of the truly memorable moments in the first Moana, like the scene in which the heroine, at her lowest moment, is visited by her luminescent ancestors emerging from the quiet ocean, or the final confrontation, a gorgeous instance of empathy and grace instead of violence, end up looking like utter dog shit in this version, which is the greatest sin of all.”

I’m sure Disney would accept savage reviews like that if the live-action Moana remake was going to earn the studio hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately for the studio, the film is on pace for a domestic opening weekend in the $60 million range. (You can tell things are bad when a trade starts doing the thing where it hypes a film’s global tracking number.)

The live-action Moana remake exists solely to make Disney easy money. A $60 million opening for this project would not only barely be more than the original Moana’s three-day opening weekend of $56.6 million (that film grossed $82.1 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend in 2016) but be nowhere near the massive $139.8 million three-day and $225.4 million five-day totals that Moana 2 opened with over Thanksgiving 2024. The live-action Lilo & Stitch movie scored a huge $146 million debut last year.

Anyone in a position of power at Disney who forced the live-action Moana remake into existence should feel bad about what they’ve done. It doesn’t matter if they did it for money or did it because they needed the comfort of replicating a hit movie after a string of box office losses, the live-action remake has made an absolute mess of the Moana franchise.

While Disney’s push to turn classic animated films into live-action movies (with the “live” part often being CGI) has always been creatively dubious, the studio has been smart enough to only do this to existing titles that aren’t actively still releasing sequels. We got Aladdin starring Will Smith because Disney isn’t making animated Aladdin sequels anymore. And Disney, despite surely wanting to cash in on the franchise, would never announce a live-action Frozen remake while Frozen III and Frozen IV are in production.

But for some reason, Disney decided that Moana — despite being a massive streaming hit year after year — was no longer viable as a theatrical property, allowing Johnson himself to announce that a live-action remake was on the way.

Then Bob Iger returned to Disney and ordered that the Moana series in the works for Disney+ be retrofitted into a theatrical release. Despite that animated film grossing $1.059 billion worldwide, Disney has yet to announce Moana 3.

“Yes, we have talked about Moana 3, yes” Johnson recently said while promoting his remake. “But first, live-action Moana, we’ll let that come out first. We have [the] amazing Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller, who have been our writers … they will pen Moana 3.”

So much of the journey that led to a live-action Moana remake has been strange. It’s been a decade since the original Moana premiered — a window far shorter than any other gap we’ve seen between an animated film’s release and Disney releasing a remake of it. I gotta wonder how much of this was driven by Johnson, who — as we can see above — has taken to speaking for the franchise itself.

When Disney announced that a live-action Moana remake was in the works in 2023, Johnson was the public face of the news. Reprising the role of Maui, this was his move. Seriously. The press release for the 2026 film made it clear that it would be “produced by Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia via their Seven Bucks Productions.” As I noted in Popculturology back then, “that’s the same group of people and production company that gave the world the disaster that was Black Adam and its betrayal of Henry Cavill.”

Maybe Disney just needs to get the live-action Moana remake out of its system. Too much money had been spent, too many egos needed to be fed (I feel bad that Catherine Laga’aia got dragged into this) to have just cancelled it like the studio should have done once Moana 2 existed.

I don’t know anymore if Disney knows the way.

‼️ THE BIG STORIES

“I think you’re way beyond redemption”

Are you as hyped as I am for Dune: Part Three? I cannot wait to see how director Denis Villeneuve picks up the threads from Dune: Part Two and weaves them together with Dune Messiah. (And maybe some Children of Dune? Give us just a quick God-Emperor credits scene!)

A new full-length trailer for Dune: Part Three, which Villeneuve and all the promotional materials are calling the conclusion to the saga, went live on Wednesday. I’m excited to see Timothée Chalamet shift into villain mode after spending last year’s awards seasons increasingly getting on everyone’s nerves.

Neither Warner Bros. nor Disney have blinked when it comes to Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday still holding onto the same December release date. I’m incredibly curious to see how this box office battle will shake out. Five years ago when the MCU was at its height, I would’ve said there was no way a Dune sequel could hold its own against an Avengers movie, but now I’m not so sure. (Watch)