Disney president Dana Walden has blamed “unusual circumstances” for the live-action Moana movie’s disappointing box office, and defended the project as an otherwise “excellent film.”
Speaking this week at the Bloomberg Screentime event (via Variety), Walden framed Moana’s poor performance as a result of the movie industry being competitive, and the film simply launching at the wrong time.
“It’s so competitive right now that you have to have… the right film at the right time, with audiences feeling a certain degree of demand,” Walden stated. “I would say our live-action Moana, which is excellent, I think it was hurt by the proximity to our second animated version of Moana, which came together under unusual circumstances, but premiered about 18 months before this one.”
The unusual circumstances Walden is referring to here relate to Disney’s relatively last-minute pivot that saw Moana 2 change from launching as a Disney+ series to a theatrical movie. This resulted in the project being slotted into Disney’s film schedule awkwardly just a year and a half before the long-gestating plans for a live-action film.
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