It would be unfortunate if Moana, directed by Thomas Kail in his feature directorial debut, follows the same path as Supergirl and Masters of the Universe—high-profile, big-budget films that ended up becoming some of the biggest box office flops in recent years.
Before discussing its box office performance, it’s worth looking at how the film has been received by critics. As the first live-action entry in the Moana franchise, it currently has a 36% score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 42/100 on Metacritic, and a 5.6/10 IMDb rating from over 1.1K users.
The third installment earned just $4 million on Thursday and is now projected to open with around $38 million or slightly more this weekend. While that’s still a solid debut for many films, it falls well short of expectations considering that Moana 2 opened to an impressive $139.8 million domestically. Compared to its predecessor, the latest film’s opening weekend will be a significant drop.
Starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Moana is his first movie of the year. His last film, the biographical drama The Smashing Machine, didn’t perform as well as many fans had hoped. Written and directed by Benny Safdie, the biographical drama received reviews, earning a 71% critics’ score and a 72% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately, strong reviews didn’t translate into ticket sales. Despite its estimated $40 million budget, the film grossed just $21.1 million worldwide, making it a box-office disappointment. But hope not again this, hope.
Alongside Dwayne, the film stars Catherine Laga’aia in her feature film debut as the title character, Moana. The cast also includes John Tui as Chief Tui, the leader of Motunui and Moana’s father, and Frankie Adams as Sina, the Chieftess of Motunui and Moana’s mother.
We’ve already seen how other recent big-budget films have performed at the box office. James Gunn’s DC Universe with Supergirl, which had a $170 million budget but earned only $107.3 million worldwide. Likewise, Masters of the Universe carried an estimated $170 million budget and grossed just $111.6 million globally.
Now, Disney’s live-action Moana arrives with an even larger $250 million budget. The big question is whether the film can generate enough box office revenue to recover its massive production costs and avoid joining the list of recent big-budget disappointments.
Moana 2 was released just two years ago, and the franchise is already expanding. To top it off, Disney announced Moana 3 just last week. But if the live-action Moana ends up underperforming at the box office, it could raise serious questions about the future of the franchise. A major flop would make it much harder to build excitement for the next installment.
