Disney’s live-action Moana and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu both underperformed at the box office, but their ticket sales are only part of the story, the company has argued.
As part of its latest financial results, Disney admitted that both Moana and The Mandalorian and Grogu’s theatrical revenues had been disappointing, but said that both movies had made up for this to some degree by also shifting plenty of merchandise.
Moana is currently languishing on a $263 million box office, against a $250 million budget, making it almost as bad a box office bomb as the widely-panned live-action Snow White. Factoring in additional marketing costs, the film will not have turned a profit. Sentiment towards the film was not positive ahead of time, with many fans questioning why the project even existed (while others were too busy creating memes featuring The Rock’s wig).
The Mandalorian and Grogu, meanwhile, finished its theatrical run on a box office of $345 million against a $165 million budget. While this is a better profit margin than Moana, it is still the lowest box office for any live-action Star Wars film — even Solo. Still, Disney is keen to tell shareholders that ticket sales are only one metric to measure these movies’ success.
“These franchise investments contributed to value creation beyond their theatrical releases,” Disney said in its financial earnings. In particular, Mandalorian and Grogu “drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise during the quarter,” Disney continued.
“Looking ahead, we expect the live-action Moana to be a strong title on Disney+, building on the success of the original film, which is one of the most streamed movies of all time, and extending the reach of the franchise, which now includes three films, a themed area at EPCOT, and a robust global merchandise business.”
Still, despite this positive spin, the chances of a live-action Moana 2 seem slim-to-none. As for the Mandalorian and his young ward, there’s no word yet of when or where these characters might appear again. (Upcoming Disney+ series Ahsoka is expected to lay the final pieces of groundwork for an Heir to the Empire project featuring Thrawn, though Dave Filoni’s long-promised team-up project currently remains uncertain.)
Elsewhere, Disney celebrated the $1 billion box office success of Toy Story 5, and said that The Devil Wears Prada 2 had also performed well, particularly internationally. Today also marked the announcement of a new initiative to fill Disney+ with user-made TikTok content, which seems to replace the company’s earlier plans to flood its streaming platform with AI slop videos made using Sora.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
