Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro used the company's Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings call on August 5, 2026, to acknowledge that two of its marquee summer films — Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana remake — underperformed at the box office Variety.

The numbers tell the story plainly. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened over Memorial Day weekend to $81 million in the domestic market — the United States and Canada — on its way to $345 million worldwide, well short of the billion-dollar grosses posted by earlier Star Wars entries The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Jedi. The live-action Moana, with Dwayne Johnson returning as Maui, opened last month and has earned $262 million worldwide against a production budget reported in the $250 million range. Variety reported that Moana stands to lose roughly $100 million in theatres for Disney Variety.

D'Amaro did not frame either film as an outright bust. The Mandalorian film, he said, drove healthy retail-sales growth for the Star Wars franchise, drew guests to the updated Millennium Falcon attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and generated significant engagement in Disney's gaming business. The live-action Moana is expected to become a strong title on Disney+, the company's streaming platform, building on the original animated film, which ranks among the most-streamed movies of all time. Disney's earnings release put the argument concisely: "These franchise investments contributed to value creation beyond their theatrical releases" Variety.

CFO Hugh Johnston echoed that position. The film business, Johnston told the call, is a portfolio game — the theatrical window, the period a movie plays exclusively in cinemas before reaching streaming or home video, is just one data point. The real value of the intellectual property, he said, lies in the cumulative benefit of decades-long storytelling feeding the entire Disney flywheel, from merchandise and parks to streaming and games Variety.

Deadline separately noted that Disney attributed the live-action Moana underperformance to its fiscal fourth quarter Deadline.

Not every summer title disappointed. D'Amaro pointed to Spider-Man: Brand New Day — a Marvel Cinematic Universe film distributed by Sony, which holds the screen rights to the character — as a record-breaking success and said its performance bodes well for Disney's own Avengers: Doomsday, due later this year Variety.

What makes this call different is the candour. Studio chiefs rarely volunteer the word "underperformed" on an earnings call without a follow-through plan to frame the damage. Here, Disney's leadership did both — admitting the theatrical shortfall while directing attention to the merchandise aisles, the theme-park turnstiles, and the streaming queue where these characters keep earning long after the projector stops running. Whether that flywheel offsets a nine-figure theatrical loss is a question the next four quarters of earnings will answer.