Going beyond the reef also serves as a fitting parallel to Laga’aia’s choosing courage over fear, and it is also her message to girls her age. “I think maybe there’s some divine thing that calls out to you that you maybe don’t know yet, but I think just seizing every opportunity is the best way to do it,” says a self-assured Laga’aia, who says she is a different person from who she was when she started filming for Moana. “Coming off the back of it and coming out the other side, I feel like I am much more likely to seize something, to go for something that maybe seems too far away, or too hard.”
Summing up the film for audiences around the world, Kail believes that Moana will speak to everyone in a language they understand rather than merely serve as a guiding tool. “It’s a story about what you do for your community, what you do for your family when they say no, and you feel like there’s a yes inside of you. And I think those are not just problems and challenges that teenagers face, but ones that all of us who have been in a family face. That is the quiet genius of Moana as a family film: it does not speak down to children or over the heads of adults.”
Disney’s reimagining of the beloved Oscar-nominated animated adventure is directed by Emmy and Tony Award winner Thomas Kail (Hamilton). The film is produced by Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Beau Flynn, Hiram Garcia, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and executive produced by Thomas Kail, Scott Sheldon, Charles Newirth, and Auliʻi Cravalho, who voiced Moana in the animated films Moana and Moana 2. Moana releases in India in English and Hindi on 10 July 2026.
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