Disney is re-tooling a Moana TV show into Moana 2, shoving it into theaters this November
Originally announced back in 2020, the Moana show has been re-developed as a film—not to be confused with the live-action remake set for 2025
Disney made a rather surprising announcement this week, revealing that it’s making a previously unmentioned sequel to its 2016 animated hit Moana. And when we say “making a sequel,” we actually mean “taking a previously scheduled Moana TV show, redeveloping it into the shape of a movie, and calling it Moana 2,” which is, y’know, one way to handle a strike-depleted film release schedule. Also, it’ll be out in November, which is apparently the kind of swift-moving release strategy you can pursue when you take a previously planned sequel TV show, reconfigure it down to movie length, and then slap a 2 on it so you can hit your holiday release quotas.
This is per Deadline, reporting on statements made by CEO Bob Iger today, announcing what could be seen as the latest big studio step back from the “Everything is streaming TV now!” brink. After all, a Moana TV show might have secured a few more subscribers for Disney+, but the original film made $682 million at the box office—pretty big numbers, when the studio’s most recent animated feature, Wish, crapped out at a meager $244 million.
Iger also acknowledged that Disney already had a Moana film project in the works, i.e., the live-action remake of the 8-year-old film that’s still set to come out in 2025, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as the boisterous god Maui. Meanwhile, it’s not clear if Johnson will also return for this new animated “sequel” Disney has suddenly whipped up, or if we’re going to end up in an Aladdin: Return Of Jafar scenario, with the series’ most bankable star being absent from its second film.
Moana 2 is scheduled for a Thanksgiving release, a traditional calendar spot for Disney animated fare that hasn’t, well, fared too well over the last few years: 2023 was Wish, while 2021 was the critically acclaimed Encanto, which struggled amidst pandemic lockdowns. And in between those was 2022's Strange World, which grossed just $75 million in theaters—so, yeah, Disney would really like to get a Thanksgiving hit on its hands this year, which might explain why it’s going back to this particular well.