NEW YORK (AP) — All the statistics raise the question, was it ever in doubt that ‘Moana 2’ would be anything other than a film?
When the second teaser trailer for ‘Moana 2’ was released on 18 May, it got 178 million views in a span of twenty-four hours. That is more than what was obtained for ‘Inside Out 2’, more than what was recorded for ‘Frozen 2’ more than any animated Disney film until then.
The sequel to the 2016 movie Moana has not only an ocean worth of hype and excitement for her release, but a whole lot of craziness to it. This is proof that one of the more surprising transformations in recent Disney history is fully working. There were plans to turn ‘Moana 2’ into a television series, Reality made it a likely candidate for one of the autumn box office hits. What else can be said but you are welcome.
When Bob Iger returned to the Disney Company in 2022, the very first thing he wished to accomplish was to make certain that the focus no longer remained on the streaming of the company’s finest works. His wants were much simpler: he wanted the focus to be on the movies, and everything else such as merchandising and streaming would come after.
‘Moana 2’ is a project that was worked on for more than a year by directors Jason Hand and David Derrick Jr. The film was announced just a few months ago, and now they have also brought on dana ledoux miller as the director and co-writer. It’s premiering on November 27.
Derrick and Hand, both longtime of Disney’s storyboard artists, had been a victim of their own success. Because of their efforts, the Disney management decided to commit fully behind an animated movie, which was true even when a live action ‘Moana’ was still being worked on (The film, helmed by Thomas Kail, is scheduled to premiere in July 2026).
“We conceived the universe, we conceived the meta-narrative that we are still talking about,” tells Derrick. “We would test it in our large cinema screen that is built in all of us’s conceiving locations. There was an outpouring: an overwhelming chorus of voices that said this needs to be shown in theaters.”
“Whether it’s through the game or the movie, there was always going to be Moana, and her story had just begun,” observes Hand. “Only that it was swelling up.”
Moana 2 was situated at the epicenter of an interesting paradigm shift for both Disney and Hollywood, where the balance of theatrical and streaming was to be reformed. Various studios have different models and that are still developing. So after rushing to try and put as much content as high speed as possible on streaming platforms, companies like Disney started to the rethink their strategy.
This year seems to have been quite good for Disney as they had made a blockbuster comeback with two billion-dollar films in “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool vs. Wolverine”. “Moana 2” could have been the third salvo in that campaign. However well “Moana 2” will perform, which will begin streaming soon, will not hurt its appeal as much. The last year’s Disney+ most watched movie? None other than ‘Moana.’ The return of the voice of Moana Cravalho and the voice of Maui Dwayne Johnson for this film may have been difficult but Hand conveys this creativity of motion pictures to the audience in very simple words: The movie conveys the plot in the best possible way because it is convenient for the viewer. Several representatives of the Pacific Islander community also admire the first film. For them, this movie set a new standard: It needs to meet expectations, and it means a lot and looks a lot.
“I always believed that it was a writer’s movie,” Miller muses. “That it will shift what happens when I entered a room to tell somebody a story, since there was a different perspective on being of the Pacific.”
Miller, who started PEAK (Pasifika Entertainment Advancement Komiti) to support her people in Hollywood, is also a writer of the live-action version of ‘Moana’. “My world is now all- Moana all the time,” she says laughing.
The two films, according to the directors, emerged together with many links and common advisers on culture.
“Moana 2” starts three years after the events of the first film and puts Moana once more in the position of having to sail across the Pacific in search of opportunity. Only now she is part of a crew in a new canoe and has to take up new tasks. Including her little sister, Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda).
Resounding confidence, Derrick explains how, ‘the first film was focused on her past, now she focuses on the great future and aims to connect everyone with that future.’ “So we added and created new characters when it was in series and we got to know them in a deep way.”
Remi describes the phase of developing new characters in the series as developing a new sculpture where the core structure of the character has already been established.
“It’s easier to say than do. Yes, it was a big task probably bigger than what we thought in the beginning’, says Hand. ‘But in the end, we were telling that same story. A lot of stuff that went by the wayside just naturally helped the story be an appropriate fighting weight for its desired mission.’
Ahoy, born for adventuring, Moana sets out to sea wishing to sail with a crew composed of fellow voyagers including Loto (Rose Matafeo), an engineer; Kele (David Fane), and a grumpy farmer; and Moni (Huallai Chung), a historian and storyteller.
Demonstrating how little progress has been made in this regard, Derrick explains: “What people don’t realize is that the people in the Pacific found the last discoverable land on Earth.” He is of Samoan ancestry himself. “They established the greatest cultural ethnosphere on earth before westward expansion, a third of the earth, all through the art and spirituality and science of way finding. So for me, it is something very important that each one of these crew members display that Indigenous genius that it took.”
Such homage, however, just like the film itself, has a different audience in theaters than at home. However, the creators of “Moana 2” are in a hurry to finish their film so that it can be full of all that can be perceived in a more or less complete manner. But they know that their female Half-Pole will look good on the screen.
“When I saw the first part of the film, I was expecting my first child,” Miller recalls. “This is a film that changed the world forever, I said to myself watching this film. My child will always know that there is an audience out there on the biggest stage for its performers.”
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