DUBAI: When Disney first announced a live-action remake of its 2016 animated movie “Moana,” it raised a familiar question: Why revisit a movie that had already become one of the studio’s most beloved modern classics?
For director Thomas Kail, the answer lay in finding something only live action could offer.
“We’re here because we love the animated version as much as the rest of the world,” Kail told Arab News. From the earliest stages of development, he said the goal was to tell the same story “with flesh and blood, to put it up on its feet and have human beings interacting, eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul. We knew there was a chance to reach for a level of emotion that we were really excited about.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays the character he voiced in the original. (Supplied)
“We also talked about what it would mean to memorialize and celebrate Polynesian culture,” he continued. “With Disney, we knew this was something that was going to reach all around the world, and so how could we ensure that that this could be another version of representation, not to replace what came before, but to stand on its own as a companion to it?
