Disney’s ‘Moana 2’ Sets $221 Million Thanksgiving Record

(Bloomberg) — Walt Disney Co.’s new Moana 2 brought in ticket sales of $221 million in the US and Canada over its five-day Thanksgiving weekend, shattering the record held by the company’s Frozen 2 since 2019. 

The performance of Moana 2, an animated sequel to the 2016 original about a Pacific island girl fighting to save her people from a terrible curse, led what was expected to be a record weekend of holiday sales for theaters, helped also by the recent releases Wicked and Gladiator II.

The new film overcame lackluster reviews, with some critics citing a story that seemed flat or muddled when compared with the original. Moana 2 scored a 65% approval rating from professional reviewers on RottenTomatoes.com, while the first film won over 95% of critics. Still, the sequel achieved a 87% score with audiences. 

Moana 2 was initially conceived as TV series for the Disney steaming service. Since the launch of the online video platform in 2019, the original Moana has been among the most-watched films on any service every year, according to Nielsen data. The catchy songs, island setting and strong female lead became popular with children and parents, particularly those stuck at home during the pandemic.

“In order to have a breakout hit post-Covid, you need the multicultural audience,” Tony Chambers, Disney’s executive vice president of theatrical distribution, said of the demographic makeup of Moana 2’s ticket sales. “We clearly got families, we clearly got females — and we clearly got the multicultural audience,” Chambers said. 

Roughly two-thirds of the film’s audience over the five-day period was female, just over a third was White, a quarter was Hispanic, 19% was Black and 12% was Asian, Disney said in a statement Sunday. 

Disney gave the new film its all from a marketing standpoint, with a full line of merchandise, Moana character appearances at its theme parks and a premiere held in Hawaii. The original film and a promotional video were the two most-watched programs on the Disney streaming service in the days leading up to the release.

On Thanksgiving Day, Moana 2 grossed $28 million, the best-ever performance for the holiday and close to double what Frozen 2 delivered in 2019. In its first two days, the new film had already exceed the five-day haul of the first Moana.

The performance cements a strong recovery for Disney’s movie studio in 2024, with the division producing the only two $1 billion-plus releases so far this year, Inside Out 2 from Pixar Animation Studios and Deadpool & Wolverine from Marvel Studios. 

Wicked, from Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures, and Gladiator II from Paramount Global, finished in second and third place, respectively. Those films debuted in cinemas on Nov. 22 to a combined haul of $168 million during their opening weekend, marking a strong start to the holiday movie-going season.

Upcoming releases include Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s animated The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim on Dec. 13, Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3, both on Dec. 20. 

(Updates with Disney comment in fifth paragraph.)

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