(NEXSTAR) – “Moana 2” sailed to the top of the box office over the long Thanksgiving weekend, giving Disney yet another record-shattering opening for an animated film.
The movie, featuring the voices of Auli‘i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, grossed an estimated total of $225 million in U.S. theaters over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend (Weds–Sun), according to Disney. That figure is enough to make “Moana 2” the biggest Thanksgiving release in history, as well as the highest-grossing five-day release of all time.
Interestingly enough, the previous record-holders were also animated films: “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” earned $204.6 million on its five-day opening weekend in April 2023, while “Frozen” grossed $95 million during its five-day opening weekend over Thanksgiving in 2013.
“Frozen 2,” the sequel to Disney’s “Frozen,” had also broke records with its Thanksgiving take in 2019 ($125 million), but that film had already been in theaters for several days before the long holiday weekend.
“Moana 2” is also now on track to become the third $1 billion-grossing movie for Disney in 2024 alone, along with “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
“’Moana 2’ has far surpassed our high expectations this weekend and is a testament to the phenomenon that Moana has become,” Alan Bergman, the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, said in a press release from The Walt Disney Company.
“Moana 2,” however, was indeed expected to be a hit, despite Disney’s last two November releases (“Strange World” and “Wish”) doing worse than expected at the box office. The original 2016 film has remained among the top-streamed films on Disney+ in recent years, having been watched for a total of over 1 billion hours as of 2023, according to Nielsen data cited by the Wall Street Journal and Disney. Nielsen data also suggests that “Moana” was the top-streamed movie — on any platform — in any of the last five years, WSJ reported.
Perhaps because of this, the film that would become “Moana 2” was originally developed to be a streaming Disney+ series. But when Bob Iger returned as chief executive, he reconsidered the balance between theatrical and streaming.
“It just shows you that the big screen and small screen are not adversarial. They can be complementary and additive,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, told the Associated Press. “Whoever made that decision to go big screen globally with ‘Moana 2,' that was one of the greatest decisions ever.”
In addition to the aforementioned records, “Moana 2” also set the record for the biggest Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday tallies (at $28 million and $54.5 million respectively), beating previous records also set by “Frozen 2.”
In addition to its $225 take over the five-day weekend, “Moana 2” also earned an estimated $164 million internationally, Deadline reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
