Disney's live-action Moana took $18 million on Friday and is heading for a $45 million opening

Updated Saturday, July 11. The first real number is in. Disney's live-action Moana took roughly $18 million domestically on Friday, including the $4.5 million it made in Thursday previews, and the weekend estimate has settled around $45 million. That is up a little from the $40 million we reported off the preview figure, and still nowhere near where Disney wanted to be.

The number

Thomas Kail's remake played about 3,900 North American theaters on Friday and led the day. Leading the day is the only good news in the sentence. The Hollywood Reporter has the weekend landing near $45 million; Deadline's range is $42 million to $46 million; Forbes has it lower, $40 million to $45 million. Disney's own target was north of $60 million, and early tracking a month ago floated $75 million to $105 million depending on who you asked.

The film cost $250 million to make. Marketing is on top of that. A $45 million domestic start on a $250 million production is the kind of math that gets meetings scheduled.

For scale, the 2016 animated Moana opened to $82 million over five days at Thanksgiving and finished at $643 million worldwide. Moana 2, which arrived 19 months ago, opened to $225 million over its five-day frame and cleared a billion. The remake is opening to a fraction of what the brand did twice before, which is the part that should worry Burbank more than the raw number.

Audiences liked it more than critics did

Two things are true at once here. Moana is sitting in the mid-30s on Rotten Tomatoes, and it pulled an A- CinemaScore from the people who actually bought tickets Friday night. An A- is not a movie that audiences are fleeing. It is a movie that not enough people showed up for in the first place.

That gap matters for what happens next. Family films with strong exit scores can hold for weeks, and Disney needs exactly that: a long, patient summer run rather than a big weekend. The obstacle arrives fast. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens July 17 from Universal, and while an R-rated Homer adaptation is not competing for the same six-year-olds, it will take screens and IMAX real estate.

The obvious comparison is Snow White, which opened to $42 million in March 2025 against a $270 million budget and a B+ CinemaScore. Disney paused development on live-action Tangled weeks later. It also un-paused it after Lilo & Stitch opened to $146 million and went to a billion. The remake pipeline does not live or die on one weekend. It does get re-litigated after one.

Dwayne Johnson, for his part, has said Moana 3 is in development.

The rest of the weekend

• Evil Dead Burn (Warner Bros./New Line): $6.7 million Friday including previews from 3,004 locations, a B CinemaScore, and the best reviews in the weekend's wide releases. The sixth Evil Dead is the small movie doing the honest work here.
• Minions & Monsters (Universal): $6.5 million Friday, heading for about $21 million in weekend two, with $108 million domestic banked.
• Toy Story 5 (Disney): $5.6 million Friday, about $18.6 million for the frame, past $800 million globally.
• Young Washington (Angel Studios): $2.1 million Friday in its second weekend after a $19 million Fourth of July debut.

Sunday actuals will move these by a million or two. They will not move the story.