Rather than making a summer splash, Disney’s live-action Moana remake floundered at the box office.

Opening with US$43 million (S$55.5 million) in North America against a US$250 million production budget, the film is already projected to lose the studio between US$100 million and US$125 million, according to Deadline.

It is also a disappointing outcome for Dwayne Johnson, who is reprising his role as the demigod Maui from the animated hits Moana (2016) and Moana 2 (2024), as it extends a streak of commercial flops for one of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars. The 54-year-old was reportedly paid nearly US$30 million as star and producer for the latest Moana. 

The biggest takeaway is not that the American actor is mired in a slump, but that Hollywood’s compensation structures have not fully adjusted to a reality where star power is less predictive of box-office performance. If studios want to rein in blockbuster budgets and mitigate risk, they should stop paying actors as if success is guaranteed and start rewarding them when they actually deliver.

Johnson has long lived up to the billing as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. Between intellectual property franchises (Fast & Furious and Jumanji) and original tentpoles (Skyscraper and San Andreas), his films had been reliable box-office draws, and his salaries consistently reflected it.

Since 2016, Johnson has been Hollywood’s highest earner four times, per Forbes. In that time, no other actor has topped the list more than once.

But his recent output has delivered more misses than hits. In 2022, Black Adam was supposed to launch a new franchise within the DC Extended Universe; instead, the film underperformed, and Warner Bros elected to start from scratch with writer-director James Gunn at the helm of a new superhero slate.

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