Disney faces $150 million loss on live‑action Moana remake

Disney released a live‑action version of "Moana" on 9 July, starring Dwayne Johnson as Maui and Catherine Laga’aia as Moana. The film cost about $250 million to produce plus roughly $120 million for marketing. Within its first week it earned only $95 million worldwide, and after two weekends the total rose to roughly $178 million, far short of the estimated $600 million needed to break even. The shortfall translates to a loss exceeding $150 million for Disney. Critical reception was poor, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 32 %. Box‑office performance declined sharply, a 56 % drop in domestic revenue during the second weekend, as the movie faced stiff competition from releases such as "Toy Story 5", "Minions" and Christopher Nolan’s "The Odyssey". Analysts noted that audiences were reluctant to revisit a franchise whose animated original debuted less than a decade earlier, describing the remake as a duplicate rather than an event.