Fans of Disney’s Moana are rightly excited by the fact that Moana 2 is hitting theaters next week. But there’s even more to be excited about if you’re a fan because there’s a live-action Moana also on the schedule for upcoming Disney movies, and the film is now shooting in Hawaii.
While we won’t see the live-action Moana until 2026, Disney Studios co-chief Alan Bergman did share one exciting sneak peek. He posted an image to Instagram of himself with Maui’s iconic fish hook. The prop looks perfect. The version from the animated movie has been made real and it’s incredible.
As awesome as this looks, I’m really curious how it’s going to look in the hands of Dwayne Johnson. He’ll be reprising his voice role in live-action playing the demigod Maui. As big as Dwayne Johnson is, this thing looks even bigger compared to Johnson’s size than the animated version was compared to the exaggerated proportions of Maui. Still, I can’t wait to see The Rock holding it.
The most successful Disney live-action remakes have been the ones that remained as faithful to the source material as possible. A look at the fish hook makes it clear the new film is going to be visually very reminiscent of the original. It seems all but certain the new movie will be as close to the animated one as possible. They’re not even designing new versions of the props.
With the success that Disney’s live-action remakes have had, the idea of seeing a remake of Moana seemed obvious and very likely to happen. Still, it’s a bit surprising that it’s happening so soon. Moana is less than a decade old, and all the other movies that have received the remake treatment so far are much older, and widely seen as classics.
Still, Moana is one of Disney’s most popular modern franchises, it’s getting a stage show on Disney’s newest cruise ship and it got a recent Disney World attraction, so it would seem they could not wait. We can likely expect the Frozen live-action remake to be along shortly, even though the animated franchise is far from over, with two Frozen movies currently in development, and Frozen 3 set for release in 2027.
On the plus side, doing the remake so soon after the original allows the movie to cast one of the original stars, something that hasn’t otherwise been possible outside of James Earl Jones’ return to voice Mufasa in the Lion King remake. Most of Moana‘s cast is made up of fresh faces, but it’s difficult to imagine anybody other than Dwayne Johnson holding Maui’s magic fish hook. We’ll finally get to see it when the movie debuts in 2026.