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Rebecca Rubin
Senior Film and Media Reporter
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Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios “Moana” failed to make a splash at the box office, earning $43 million from 3,827 North American theaters in its opening weekend.
Those ticket sales, though enough for No. 1 on box office charts, are disastrous given the live-action “Moana” remake has a massive $250 million production budget — and that’s before Disney’s hefty marketing spend. Arriving in theaters a decade after the original 2016 animated musical and less than two years after the sequel, “Moana” underscores the trickiness of timing in terms of Disney’s live-action remakes. Wait too long, à la “Snow White” and “Dumbo,” and there’s not enough cultural resonance; go too soon, and there’s not enough nostalgia to bring audiences back to theaters for something they’ve seen before (and can readily watch on Disney+).
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