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Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A.V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area.
The tepidly received film will look for a second life on streaming
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Disney’s latest box office dud is headed for streaming. A little over three months after the live-action film Moana debuted in theaters to an underwhelming box office performance, the movie is coming to Disney Plus on Oct. 21.
Moana opened to a dismal $43 million at the domestic box office on opening weekend, a huge whiff considering the movie's $250 million budget. While it eventually made around $323.6 million worldwide, movies typically need to earn double or 2.5 times their budget for the studio to break even, so this was almost certainly a big underperformance for Disney.
Critics blasted the film for failing to find its own identity compared to the 2016 animated movie, and audiences seemed similarly unenthusiastic about a live-action remake of a picture that came out just a decade ago. At least with most of Disney’s other bland live-action retreads, the animated movies they revisited were often decades old.
The original animated Moana and its 2024 sequel are beloved musicals centered on Polynesian culture. Both were huge hits with audiences. The first film has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and made $687.2 million on a $150-175 million budget. While its 2024 sequel, Moana 2, was far more divisive among critics, it was an even bigger box office hit, making over $1 billion on a $150 million budget. Both movies are a firm reminder that audiences are eager for good films centered on diverse cultures.
How has Disney’s 2026 been so far?
Despite quite a few box office duds, like The Mandalorian and Grogu and Moana, Disney is one of two studios to have passed $4 billion at the worldwide box office in 2026. Toy Story 5 is the company’s biggest earner, making more than $1 billion globally, while The Devil Wears Prada 2 also performed quite well with $692 million. Of course, Toy Story 5’s incredible performance wasn’t enough to stop Disney from laying off employees at Pixar earlier this year. Disney has more films on the way, including what will potentially be its biggest hit of 2026, Avengers: Doomsday.