Awkward alert! Disney changed the name of their upcoming animated film Moana to Oceania in Italy, apparently to avoid confusion with the country’s beloved late porn star Moana Pozzi.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, secondhand sources claim the film’s directors confirmed that Pozzi’s popularity influenced Disney Italia’s decision to amend the movie’s name at this year’s Annecy Festival. Variety reports that the company’s head of theatrical marketing said in a meeting last year that they were “thinking about the issue.” Disney has not commented.
The film will be released in Italy on December 22 as Oceania. Elsewhere in Europe, per THR, the film and character have been changed to Vaiana.
According to THR, the vast majority of Italian press believes that Moana was changed to Oceania to protect minors from stumbling across vintage X-rated images from Pozzi’s past while searching for the film online.
Pozzi got her start in show business in 1980, but became a household name in 1981 when she starred on the children’s TV series Tip Tap Club. However, she caused a media uproar not long after the series premiered when her first hard-core porn film, Valentina, Girl in Heat, came out that same year. Though she denied that it was her in the film, she was suspended from her role on Tip Tap Club, according to THR.
Pozzi went on to star in more than 100 adult movies before her untimely death at age 33 in 1994.
Aside from her porn career, Pozzi was a popular model, writer and politician. In her 1991 memoir, Moana’s Philosophy, she listed the names of all the famous men she allegedly slept with, including Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi, among others. Pozzi once ran to be the mayor of Rome with a platform of legalizing brothels, sexual education reform and the creation of “love parks,” THR reports.
Moana hits theaters in the U.S. on November 23.
