Disney’s Most-Streamed Movie Has a Sequel Coming to Theaters

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(Bloomberg) — Walt Disney Co.’s most streamed movie of all time has nothing to do with Star Wars, The Avengers or the singing sisters of Frozen. It’s Moana, an 8-year-old animated feature about a Pacific island girl trying to find her place in the world.

Since the Disney+ streaming service launched in late 2019, Moana has been among the four-most-watched films on any streaming service every year, according to Nielsen data. Fans have watched nearly 80 billion minutes of Moana, the equivalent of seeing the picture 748 million times. It’s also been in the streaming top 10 almost all of this year. 

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All that bodes well for the next chapter in the franchise, Moana 2, which hits theaters on Nov. 27. Disney has historically released some of its biggest animated hits over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, although some recent pictures, Strange World and Wish, disappointed. 

Moana 2 should also help accelerate the comeback of Disney’s film studio, which has released a number of hits this year including Deadpool & Wolverine from Marvel Studios and Alien: Romulus. Disney is expected to post a $306 million quarterly profit in the division that includes those theatrical releases when it reports results on Nov. 14, according to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. 

Fandango, the largest online movie ticketing service, said that Moana 2 has set the best first-day ticket presales of any animated film this year, including Inside Out 2 from Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios, which has grossed close to $1.7 billion at the box office since its release in June. 

“Some people in the know are telling me that they think Moana 2 could eclipse and outshine even the success of Inside Out 2,” Adam Aron, the chief executive officer of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s largest cinema chain, said on a Nov. 6 call with investors. 

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Moana 2 is on track to generate as much as $135 million in US and Canada ticket sales in its five-day opening weekend, according to some estimates. That would put it ahead of the original film which took in $82 million over the long holiday weekend in 2016.

That picture went on to reap $643 million in global ticket sales, a big number, but not even enough to land it in the top 30 highest grossing animated films of all time. It was nominated for two Academy Awards: best animated feature and best original song, but didn’t win either.

What really gave Moana momentum was streaming, and specifically its online appearance at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The film, with its shots of the ocean and island life, proved to be escapist for parents and children coping with the shutdown, according to Andrea Coppola, a New Jersey resident whose preschool son Leo became a big Moana fan. 

The original score by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, including power ballads such as How Far I’ll Go, also resonated. The album has sold 5.6 million copies, according to Luminate Data, more than Coco and Encanto, two other recent Disney musicals, combined.

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“We know all the words,” Coppola said. 

On Reddit threads, parents debated whether Moana was the best Disney movie ever, with one mom describing her toddler pecking Cheerios off the floor to imitate Heihei, Moana’s rooster sidekick.

The film relied on a “updated feminist formula” of a Disney princess embarking on an adventure, Kirsten Thompson, chair of the film and media department at Seattle University, said in an interview. The animation — including tattoos, tribal clothing and bioluminescent water — added to the appeal. 

“All of that makes for a stunning visual feast,” said Thompson, whose middle name coincidentally is Moana, which loosely translates to deep or shining waters. 

Disney originally planned Moana 2 as a TV series for its Disney+ streaming service. When a movie slated for Thanksgiving release fell through, Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger asked film division chief Alan Bergman if he had any suggestions for what they could replace it with. Bergman suggested that the Moana series storyline could be cut down to the length of film and include more cinematic visuals to make it suitable for a theatrical release. Iger said he thought the result was terrific.

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“I’ve seen it six times,” Iger said at a fundraiser for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art earlier this month.

Moana 2 will premiere in Hawaii before being distributed to the rest of the world’s theaters. 

Unlike the first picture, it doesn’t feature new music from Miranda. It does have Auli’i Cravalho back as the title character, and Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui, a shapeshifting demigod. The plot involves Moana and her unlikely crew going on a new sailing adventure. 

Seattle University’s Thompson said that the sequel shouldn’t simply attempt to “repackage the magic of the first one — it’s going to have to have its own very good score and tell a new story of some kind, maybe with the character going to a different island or deeper underwater.”

Disney also has a live-action version planned for next year, suggesting parents will have plenty of Moana to stream for years to come.

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