Weekend Preview: ‘Moana’ & the Problem With Converting the Country

Awareness is a huge priority in the film industry, for better or for worse. In a practical sense, a film’s awareness establishes the immediate audience scope. Moviegoers who turnout for a film are only going if they know of the film already, right? However, when a film has an overwhelming 80%+ awareness among the general public like this weekend’s new release, Moana, does Awareness become the ultimate metric for success or a harbinger of oversaturation?

A whopping six weeks prior to release, Moana had already achieved awareness levels many films wish they could reach on their opening weekends. By opening week, Moana’s awareness is in the realm of many successful cultural phenomena like Barbie, the recently released (and highest opening weekend of the year so far) Toy Story 5, and, coincidentally, Moana 2. Even compared to the awareness levels of recent live-action Disney adaptations, Moana significantly overtakes all of them, including last year’s megahit Lilo & Stitch.

However, even if the whole country knows about a film, it does not guarantee that everyone will see it. Overwhelming Awareness helps to ensure that those who actually intend on seeing the film in theaters know it’s coming out. But that Intent brings the Awareness into context relative to its effectiveness. Efficient conversion is the name of the game.

Awareness in tandem with Intent helps to illuminate more about opening weekend performance of recent Disney animated sequels than Awareness alone. By release, Zootopia 2’s Awareness topped Inside Out 2’s, despite the latter opening significantly higher ($154.2M vs $100.2M). The discrepancy resolves itself by focusing on the Intent differences between the two films. Unsurprisingly, Inside Out 2 boasted more urgency. On the other side, Toy Story 5 shared a similar level of release-week Intent to Inside Out 2, which helps explain its similar opening ($159.6M)

As for Moana, the Awareness vs. Intent comparison comes into focus against the backdrop of Disney’s previous live-action releases. Despite awareness overtaking Lilo & Stitch, Moana’s overall Theatrical Intent more closely resembles Snow White. It’s also behind The Little Mermaid and Lilo & Stitch.

Intent among the general public specifically is not the end-all be-all for performance. Lilo & Stitch opened roughly $50 million higher than The Little Mermaid despite the same overall Intent score. Discrepancies exist. But analyzing the metric by the target demographic helps provide more insight into the actual turnout audience and better clarity into performance differences than Awareness alone. 

Bringing Moana into the comparison, its Intent differences among the under-35 demographic compared to the other live-action films show that it is not quite a duplicate of the Snow White case that the overall comparison made it seem initially. The Intent among the under-35 demographic still shows not only a clear gap between Moana and Lilo & Stitch, but a significant gap between Snow White as well. 

The audience still has final say on Moana’s actual performance, but whatever that performance will be will not be based on Awareness alone. Awareness is still a necessity for these potential megablockbusters, but Intent is the backbone for results. Moana’s significant Awareness shows an intense brand strength of the IP, but the Intent on the film itself shows the specific goals and potential hurdles for actual success.