“This isn’t meant to replace the animated film, it’s meant to sit alongside it,” director Thomas Kail says of Disney’s live-action Moana, due in theaters July 8, 2026. Catherine Laga’aia steps into the title role opposite returning star and producer Dwayne Johnson as Maui, with Dana Ledoux Miller and Jared Bush scripting and Lin-Manuel Miranda again involved in the music.
Fresh images from Disney’s live-action take on “Moana,” bring Motunui back into view, with Pua and Hei Hei once again stealing the eye. At the helm, Thomas Kail is adamant that the new film is a “complementary work” that adds to the animated original rather than tampering with its heart. Catherine Laga’aia steps in as Moana opposite Dwayne Johnson, returning as Maui and shaping the project as both actor and producer, while the team wrestles with how to make ocean magic feel real. The voyage is set to reach theaters on July 10, 2026.
Bringing Moana back to the shore
Disney’s live-action Moana is no longer a distant headline, it now has first images that offer a clearer sense of what’s coming. The goal, director Thomas Kail says, is to make something that can sit beside the 2016 film rather than overwrite it. The pictures lean into familiar iconography, but with new textures you can almost feel.
Kail has described the movie as a “complementary” take, one that keeps the story’s heart while letting live-action change the chemistry of key moments. That shift matters, because this is a tale many families have revisited often, sometimes with the soundtrack still playing in the background.
A new Moana, and a familiar demigod
The biggest on-screen handoff belongs to Catherine Laga’aia, stepping into the title role with the task of embodying a character people know by silhouette alone. The newly released images also finally reveal Maui’s live-action look, with Dwayne Johnson returning to the part he voiced in animation, now very much in front of the camera.
There’s reassurance in the smaller details too. Hei Hei and Pua are confirmed to appear, part of the story’s comic rhythm and its softer pauses. It’s a reminder that the remake isn’t chasing “grittier,” it’s trying to translate tone, including the odd little beats that made the original stick.
The creative relay behind the camera
Kail comes to the project after directing Broadway’s Hamilton for the screen, and he’s leaning on writers who already know this world. Dana Ledoux Miller and Jared Bush helped shape the script, a point Kail frames as keeping the movie’s DNA connected to what came before (and to what audiences embraced again with Moana 2).
Music remains central. Lin-Manuel Miranda is involved again, and Kail has spoken about the responsibility of re-presenting songs that have lived beyond the movie itself, in cars, classrooms, and family kitchens.
Heat, water, and a village you can walk through
Some of the toughest work, Kail says, was practical: staging scenes on water and shooting in punishing heat that reached about 104°F. Live-action makes those elements visceral, but it also forces constant coordination, especially when parts of the environment will later be finished in post-production.
To keep performers grounded, the production built physical sets, including Moana’s village, and brought in nearly 200 actors for those sequences. Will that tangible foundation make the fantasy feel bigger when it arrives?
The date fans can circle now
Disney has set the film’s US theatrical release for July 10, 2026. That gives the studio time to balance real locations, effects-heavy moments, and a duo-led story that hinges on whether Moana and Maui’s bond feels earned all over again.