Can the sequel to Disney’s most-streamed movie Moana accelerate the studio’s comeback?

UNITED STATES – Walt Disney Company’s most streamed movie of all time has nothing to do with Star Wars, The Avengers or the singing sisters of Frozen.

It is Moana, an eight-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 (2016) 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 has also been in the streaming top 10 almost all of 2024.

All that bodes well for the next chapter in the franchise, Moana 2, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Nov 28.

Disney has historically released some of its biggest animated hits over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, although some recent pictures, Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023), disappointed.

Moana 2 should help accelerate the comeback of Disney’s film studio, which has released a number of hits in 2024, including superhero blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine from Marvel Studios and sci-fi sequel Alien: Romulus.

Disney is expected to post a US$306 million (S$408.4 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 Moana 2 has set the best first-day ticket pre-sales of any animated film in 2024. This includes Inside Out 2 from Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios, which has grossed close to US$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,” Mr Adam Aron, chief executive of AMC Entertainment Holdings, the world’s largest cinema chain, said on a Nov 6 call with investors.

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

That picture went on to reap US$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 for How Far I’ll Go – but did not 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 lockdown, according to Ms Andrea Coppola, a New Jersey resident whose pre-school son Leo became a big Moana fan.

The original score by American songwriter-actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical Hamilton, 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 (2017) and Encanto (2021) – two other recent Disney musicals – combined.

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

The film relied on an “updated feminist formula” of a Disney princess embarking on an adventure, Professor 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 Prof 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 Disney+. When a movie slated for a Thanksgiving release fell through, chief executive Bob Iger asked film division chief Alan Bergman if he had any suggestions for what they could replace it with.

Mr Bergman suggested that the Moana series storyline could be cut down to the length of a film and include more cinematic visuals to make it suitable for a theatrical release. Mr Iger said he thought the result was terrific.

“I’ve seen it six times,” Mr Iger said at a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in early November.

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

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

Prof Thompson said that the sequel should not 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 2025, suggesting parents will have plenty of Moana to stream for years to come. BLOOMBERG