The rough ride for Disney’s live-action Moana is not letting up. The remake earned roughly $5.5 million domestically on its second Friday per Variety’s early estimates, with the weekend landing at about $19 million, a drop of roughly 56 percent from its already soft debut.
The Numbers Keep Sliding
A 56 percent second weekend decline is a troubling hold for a family film, a category that typically leans on strong weekday and repeat business through the summer. Family titles that connect tend to drop in the 30s or low 40s; a mid-50s fall suggests the audience that wanted to see the film largely showed up in week one. There is one thin silver lining: by the standards of Disney’s own remakes, it is actually the smallest second weekend drop for a direct live-action remake since 2019’s Aladdin. Still, it follows an opening weekend of roughly $43 million, one of the weakest debuts in the history of Disney’s live-action remake program, and Sunday estimates put the domestic total at just around $82 million through 10 days.
The competitive environment is not helping. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is consuming the box office conversation with a record-setting $124.5 million domestic opening, taking over virtually every IMAX and premium large-format screen and squeezing every other wide release for attention.
The Math Gets Harder
With a reported $250 million production budget before marketing, every soft weekend deepens the hole. Deadline has already projected losses of up to $125 million for the film, and a second weekend in the $19 million range does little to change that trajectory. International grosses and an eventual Disney+ afterlife will soften the blow, but the theatrical story is becoming one of the year’s most cautionary for the remake strategy.
Final weekend actuals arrive Monday, and we will update if the numbers shift the picture.
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