Disney has, for most of the past decade, made a point to abandon original movies in favor of taking its beloved catalog of animated films and turning them into "live-action" remakes.Some of these have been successful either critically or commercially, like the 2015 version of "Cinderella," 2016's "The Jungle Book," or the 2019 remake of "The Lion King," which inexplicably made nearly $1.7 billion worldwide.As recently as 2025, "Lilo & Stitch" made over $1 billion globally.
But these success stories are matched by a number of failures, both financially and otherwise.And hopefully the disastrous mistakes in its most recent efforts puts a stop to the endless slog of poorly conceived and executed movies churned out by a once-proud studio.LIVE-ACTION REMAKE OF 'MOANA' GETS RAVAGED BY CRITICS IN LATEST BLOW TO DISNEY STUDIOS"Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" star Rachel Zegler at the Hollywood premiere of the new film last month.
(Rodin Eckenroth / Stringer)"Snow White," also from 2025, became one of the biggest financial failures in modern Hollywood history, an unsurprising outcome given the long list of obvious mistakes.Star Rachel Zegler was wildly miscast, then spent much of the promotional period criticizing the classic original film.
Negative reaction to leaked on-set photos led to a year of delay as the film was reshot and edited to salvage the plot.It didn't work.Zegler's performance was widely panned, her off-putting statements and attitude affected attendance, and the film lost Disney an astonishing $170 million.
This past weekend, even without the same level of negative pre-release press, "Moana" opened in theaters.And is remarkably tracking to be a similar loss.Incredibly, Disney gave the "live-action" version of "Moana" a whopping $250 million budget.
Not including a massive marketing spend.Assuming at least $100 million in marketing costs, a fairly standard number for a big-budget film, that's $350 million in production costs.
Given a 50/50 revenue ...