Nearly two months after earning the biggest Thanksgiving opening weekend in box office history, Disney’s “Moana 2” has passed $1 billion at the global box office.
The sequel added $13.9 million worldwide this weekend to pass the mark, joining “Zootopia” and the two “Frozen” films as the fourth film from Walt Disney Animation to pass the ten-digit milestone. All three of the 2024 releases to hit $1 billion came from Disney, with “Moana 2” joining Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” — the highest grossing animated film of all time — Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the highest grossing R-rated film of all time.
Over the past decade, Disney has used Thanksgiving weekend as a launch pad for Walt Disney Animation titles, but suffered two high profile busts in recent years from that release window with “Strange World” and “Wish.” In February of last year, CEO Bob Iger, as part of a studio-wide pivot towards sequels, announced that a long-developing “Moana” streaming series for Disney+ was being redesigned into a theatrical sequel that would take the Thanksgiving 2024 slot.
While the first “Moana” was a solid theatrical success with $643 million grossed worldwide, the launch of Disney+ in 2019 and the subsequent COVID-, 19 pandemic turned the film into the most watched title on the streaming service. With years of hype built from its success on the home platform, “Moana 2” exploded into theaters with a 5-day Thanksgiving domestic opening of $225.4 million, a full $100 million more than what “Frozen II” made in the holiday period five years prior.
With the presence of other well-received family films in the Christmas corridor like Universal’s “Wicked,” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and Disney’s own “Mufasa,” “Moana 2” didn’t have as strong legs through December as “Inside Out 2” did over the summer. But it has still done enough to join the $1 billion club, making it the 32nd film in Disney’s filmography to do so.
Disney may have to wait a while for its next $1 billion hit, but it has two strong chances to hit that mark at the end of the year. Next Thanksgiving will see the release of “Zootopia 2,” followed by the third installment of James Cameron’s wildly popular “Avatar” series.
