Moana's Auli'i Cravalho confirms she won't star in live-action remake
Cravalho serves as an executive producer on the project, alongside co-star Dwayne Johnson, who will be reprising his role
When Disney first embarked on its apparently endless plans to film live-action remakes of its celebrated catalogue of animated films—which kicked off in earnest, we’d argue, with Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella in 2015—the question of whether to bring back members of the original cast to reprise their roles was rendered largely moot by the fact that most of said cast members were, well, dead. (Of the original cast of 1950's Cinderella, for instance, only William Edward Phipps, who played Prince Charming, and June Foray, the animation legend who provided the noises for Lucifer the Cat, were still alive when Branagh’s film came out, and both were in their 90s.)
But as live-action Disney has raced haphazardly to catch up with animated Disney, those gaps have gotten a lot smaller—culminating in the reveal last month of the Moana remake, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as the demigod Maui just seven years after voicing him for the animated film. This week, though, the film’s star, Auli’i Cravalho, confirmed that she will not be doing the same.