Disney’s Moana, a fun and vibrant live-action reimagining of one of the studio’s most beloved animated films, invites audiences to experience Moana’s epic journey like never before when it opens exclusively in theaters Friday, July 10. Shaped by an expansive collaboration with creative talent from across the Pacific Islands, Moana features an incredible cast, breathtaking locations, and meticulous filmmaking craftsmanship — resulting in a cinematic adventure that celebrates the timeless story, characters, and songs.
“I was excited about the shot — the opportunity we had — because this is a beloved universal franchise by now,” Dwayne Johnson, who produces the film and reprises his role as the trickster demigod Maui, explained. “Now, you have a shot to do something special.”
“We Know the Way”
Casting the title role required a search as sweeping as the film itself. After Bernard Telsey and Tiffany Little Canfield led an extensive worldwide casting search, a then 17-year-old newcomer from Sydney, Australia, won over Johnson and Emmy® Award- and Tony Award®-winning director Thomas Kail: Catherine Lagaʻaia, who makes her feature debut as Moana.
“There were thousands of really talented young women who auditioned, but when I saw her [audition] tape, I sat up straight in my chair,” Kail recalled. “There’s nothing like the medium of film to introduce the world to someone, and Catherine has a light inside her; she doesn’t need us to light her… I said to her, ‘Katie, if you can go from high school to doing this movie, talk about high-altitude training! You can literally do anything after this.’”
For Lagaʻaia, stepping into such an iconic role meant charting her own path.
“I had to make it my own,” Lagaʻaia — who sought advice from executive producer Auliʻi Cravalho, who voiced Moana in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Moana and Moana 2 — said. “You can’t emulate somebody else.”
“Where You Are”
The Moana ensemble is composed of more than 200 actors from the Pacific, and that commitment to authentic representation was always baked into the filmmakers’ vision.
“We found this on Moana 2, and on the original Moana — this global embrace and curiosity of Polynesian culture,” Johnson, who will be inducted as an official Disney Legend during D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in August, said. “And it all starts at the top, with our maestro, our director. We met in 2023, and he said things that really moved me, just in terms of the vision of the film, how we wanted to shoot the film, how we wanted make people feel. I’m paraphrasing, but he said… ‘A lot of times [what we deliver] is written in the sand, but it will get washed away… We’re going to etch it in stone, where it never goes away and it’s forever.’ And I love that. I’m that kind of guy who gets fired up when I hear that.”
That same authenticity resonates deeply with Lagaʻaia, who sees her own community reflected throughout the film — both in herself and beyond.
“The first time I got to see her onscreen [in 2016’s Moana], I thought it was really funny because I didn’t really think she looked like me; I thought she looked my sister,” Lagaʻaia said. “I feel like that’s such a universal experience with Moana — even if she doesn’t look like you, she reminds you of someone. And that’s because she is such an accurate and true representation of the Pacific Islands and of Polynesia. And even beyond her, all of the other characters in the animated [movie], they have that same essence of people you may know.”
“You’re Welcome”
For Kail, signing on to direct Moana afforded him an opportunity to reunite with his longtime friend and In the Heights and Hamilton collaborator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will also become a Disney Legend in August. Miranda – a Pulitzer Prize, GRAMMY®, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning actor, director, producer, and songwriter – wrote the original songs for Moana with Opetaia Foaʻi and Mark Mancina and is a producer for the film. Rather than try to reinvent the iconic soundtrack, they crafted a new, meaningful addition.
“We wanted to find new music, but we also didn’t want to do it just to do it,” Kail said. “Lin and I, along with the rest of our team, scrutinized the film, and it felt like all the musical moments that we wanted were there and expressed. So, that takes us to the end credits. In the original Moana, it was a different version of songs we had just heard, so we thought, ‘What if we did something here that allowed a duet that we have never heard, like Maui and Moana singing together?’ Then we thought, ‘If we’re in the end credits and we’re outside of the body of the movie, what if it’s both of our Moanas and the one person who links them — Maui?’ It felt like it was a nice way to have both an emotional transference there and also the metatextualness of that — that you could have the bridging of Auliʻi, now the ancestor who was originally Moana, leading the way and passing a torch to Katie.”
The result is “Along the Way,” a brand-new duet performed by Lagaʻaia, Johnson, and Cravalho. For Lagaʻaia, hearing the demo for the first time felt unreal for multiple reasons.
“The first time I heard it was such a surreal experience, because the people who did the demo were Lin, Phillipa Soo, and Jasmine Cephas Jones from Hamilton,” she said. “The idea that Phillipa Soo is singing a song that you’re gonna sing — she sang my part in the demo. Honestly, I was like, ‘We don’t even need me on it! This is perfect to me.’ Getting to hear the Schuyler sisters sing a song for me was incredible. I was so excited to try something that was so new and so fresh. The other material has been done before, and it’s been honored in such a beautiful way with our film. But [it’s great] to have something new that I can plant my flag on and say, ‘This is mine.’ And even if years in the future, somebody else gives it another go, I hope they have the same excitement for this new song that we did.”
For Kail, that enduring quality is the whole point — and it’s exactly what has kept Moana‘s music alive in the decade since the original film’s release.
“For me, the thing that makes a film enduring, even beyond how many times you’ve seen it, is the music,” he said. “There’s a reason why Disney has made so many movies that resonate 50 years later — because of the score, because of the songs. Even if you’ve only seen Moana 12 times, you’ve definitely heard ‘How Far I’ll Go‘ 673 times. These are songs that have been in our consciousness daily. And the music, which connects us to the emotion of who we were and where we were, is what makes the impact so present and so continuous.”
