Aaaaaaaaaaaand you shouldn't have mention Sing here within the presence of certain user(s). Just ignore them otherwise. Those posters are known to rant.
Now onto your thread.
As some have already point out, movies like The Jungle Book, Aladdin, The Emperor’s New Groove, Pocahontas, Lilo and Stitch, and Mulan have all been successes to modest successes in the past. Although most of those movies have also contain elements that would strongly appeal to the male audience, and/or feature a male lead. While Brother Bear was a modest hit, the critical reception for it wasn’t strong, the main character remains a bear for the most part, movie’s direction was said to gone south for many people post- transformation, and the characters just didn’t have enough appeal for everyone. To a lesser extent there’s BH6 and one of the biggest successes of the recent revival. And again, that movie contains elements that strongly appeal to the male audience— by having male leads and being a superhero action movie loosely based on a Marvel comic.
In terms of being a Disney princess movie during the recent revival, well...it’s still too early to tell for Moana. That could unfortunately be one of the contributing factors, along with the timing of its domestic release. Though I hope that's not the case either. That was speculated to be the case with the studio's last non-white princess movie, PatF (that also didn't bomb by the way, it was just a modest success by Disney standards). Where there are elements in the movie that focus on characters, customs, themes, and setting that the average moviegoers felt they might not identify with right away. It also uses a 'feminine' title too, unlike Tangled and Frozen.
The biggest contributing factor is obviously its competition against other blockbusters-- not just the two animated ones-- that also appeal to a wide range of audience. I knew the last two months looked super packed and conflicted for end-of-the-year award contenders and blockbuster releases. Honestly, I'm not sure why Disney would release three of their biggest properties so closely together like that-- a MCU, a WDA princess musical, and another Star Wars installment. Especially when the last property was very well-known to bank a *beep* load on its brand alone. Maybe there are some young and old moviegoers alike that will also think along the line of "Let's go see Rogue One instead. Star Wars for life!" or to a lesser extent "La La Land seems more like a fun holiday musical for me".
Of course it wasn't gonna to have the same kind of box office success right away like Frozen or Zootopia did. Because those Disney movies didn't get to experience an insane amount of crowded competition like Moana did. Which included two animated movies via major studios and an ultimate showstopper called Rogue One (associated with Disney themselves). In China specifically, it was going up against Your Name--an anime movie via Toho-- the folks that gave us Godzilla. So why did a lot of Chinese moviegoers prefer to see that foreign animated movie over Moana? Moana have to share a super pack schedule with other American and popular foreign releases over there too.
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