Both Moana (2026) and Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu fell short of box office expectations over the summer. Disney has responded. It’s telling how much Disney invested in the respective films that the box office tallies for this summer’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu and Moana are said to have come up short. ... Disney defends its new Star Wars and Moana movies after box office misfires
Both Moana (2026) and Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu fell short of box office expectations over the summer. Disney has responded.
It’s telling how much Disney invested in the respective films that the box office tallies for this summer’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu and Moana are said to have come up short.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu has a worldwide box office take of $345m, whilst Moana has earned $263m thus far. Both, of course, sit within franchise where previous movies have been measured in the billions.
For Disney then, it’s been an up and down year, albeit with big box office successes thanks to Toy Story 5 (for which it rewarded Pixar staff in time honoured fashion) and The Devil Wears Prada 2. But on its latest earnings call – yep, it’s that time of the calendar again – Disney CEO Josh D’Amuro has backed its new movies.
“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations,” he argued, “our investments in those core properties” – we used to call them films – “fuel other parts of our company.”
Describing the two feature films built by thousands of creatives as ‘franchise investments’, D’Amuro added that “The Mandalorian & Grogu’ drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise and drew guests to the updated Millennium Falcon attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and led to significant engagement in gaming as well …And the live-action Moana is expected 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.”
Fundamentally, he’s right there, and later in the call the firm was a teeny bit more open on its disappointment at the box office performance of both films. And hey, if you liked them, you liked them.
But what’s telling is, even taken in franchise terms, both were a notable decline. The previous cinematic entries in both franchises grossed over $1bn apiece (appreciating that Star Wars had been off the big screen for just over six years, Moana for less than two.) That’s not the news that Disney wanted, no matter what kind of face it puts on it. But given that it felt both films were made for shareholders as much as audiences, maybe the results aren’t that much of a surprise.
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