How Disney Is Releasing Moana 2 Just 9 Months After First Announcement

Disney has announced Moana 2 for a 2024 release that’s just nine months away, but how did the studio manage to hide the surprise and get the sequel made so quickly? Animation is a costly and time-consuming endeavor, and feature-length animated films are one of the most costly and time-consuming forms of animation. Since they take so long to make, animated movies are usually announced years in advance – especially if the studio wants to build hype around a highly anticipated sequel to one of its biggest hits.

Moana 2’s announcement, less than a year before the movie is due to be released, is a strange deviation from the norm. Audiences are used to waiting two or three years from the announcement of a movie before it’s actually released. It’ll be a refreshing change when Moana 2 arrives just a few months after Disney’s announcement (on November 27, to be exact). But how was this possible? How did Disney manage to hide the fact that it was working on Moana 2, and how can the studio afford to announce a movie less than a year before its release?

Moana 2 Was Being Worked On By Disney Since 2020 – As A TV Show

A follow-up to Moana was first announced way back in December 2020, but not as a sequel movie entitled Moana 2; it was announced as a Disney+ series that would act as a sequel to the movie. This Moana streaming show was already planned for a 2024 release, so all the writing, artwork, and storyboarding were done. That’s why the studio was able to make the surprise announcement that Moana 2 will be ready in time for a 2024 release; all the work was already done for a different Moana sequel project.

Now, it’s just a matter of reworking what was already done for the Moana TV series into the format of a feature-length movie. It’s not a common practise in Hollywood to retool a TV show into a movie, but it has been done before. Marvel Studios is reportedly reworking its long-gestating Armor Wars series into a movie. David Lynch turned his pilot script for a Mulholland Drive TV series into the movie of the same name when the show failed to get picked up by a network. But these changes are usually made in the early pre-production stages.

Why Did Disney Decide To Turn Its Moana TV Show Into Moana 2?

Disney’s decision to turn the Moana TV show into a Moana 2 movie for the big screen is part of returning CEO Bob Iger’s attempts to turn the ship around. Iger is back at the helm of Disney on the tail end of a series of box office disappointments: The Marvels, Elemental, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Disney+ has not turned out to be the cash cow that Iger was hoping it would be, and plenty of subscribers canceled their subscriptions when the prices went up, so there’s no use hemorrhaging more money on original streaming content.

What Disney desperately needs right now is theatrical hits. That’s why Iger’s first order of business upon his return to the Mouse House was to announce Frozen 3, Zootopia 2, and Toy Story 5. There’s no such thing as a guaranteed hit in big-budget Hollywood filmmaking, but Iger is sticking to the safest bets possible in his bid to get Disney back on track. Since there’s practically no return on investment in streaming content, Iger figures Moana 2 will serve the company much better as a theatrical movie, especially given the enduring popularity of the original Moana.

Is Moana 2 Going From A TV Show To Being A Movie Something To Worry About?

The fact that Moana 2 is being scraped together from story material and artwork created for an entirely different project could be concerning. The Moana sequel story is no longer being told in its most organic form; it’s being told in the form that will make the most money for Disney. To some degree, this is probably something to worry about. If Disney executives overhaul a TV show and cram it into a feature film, then Moana 2 could end up being a horse designed by committee.

If there was a strong creative decision behind this move, with the filmmakers realizing that the story they’ve concocted for the Moana streaming series would actually work better as a movie, then that’s commendable. One of the biggest problems with the movie tie-in shows produced for Disney+ is that so many of them would’ve worked better as a movie. Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a three-act feature film storyline stretched out to a six-part miniseries. The same goes for the Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which added in superfluous, inconsequential plot points to pad out the runtime.

If there’s an actual creative reason to turn the Moana TV show into a sequel movie, then that’s fine. But that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. This is so obviously a panic-mode business decision that it’s pretty worrying. Iger didn’t choose to rework the Moana series into a movie because it’s the best thing for the story; this decision was based purely on the profitability of Disney’s investment. Theatrical movies have more moneymaking potential, because they don’t come with a subscription fee that customers are already paying; it forces them to put down fresh money.

Why Moana 2 Could Work, Despite Concerns

Despite the obvious moneymaking motivation behind the decision to turn Moana 2 from a TV series into a movie, the sequel could still be great. The first movie is a masterpiece, so there’s plenty of goodwill built up there, and there’s still a good creative team involved in the sequel (initially working on the TV show and now working on the movie). Moana story artist David Derrick, Jr. is stepping up to direct the sequel in his directorial debut, making him the first Samoan filmmaker to direct a movie for Walt Disney Animation Studios.

No matter the quality, Moana 2 will absolutely be a box office hit. The sequel doesn’t have to be quite as great as the original – making a movie as great as the original Moana is like catching lightning in a bottle – but if the creative team can just get close to the quality of the first movie, then it’ll have worked out well. The songs will be great and the voice actors will give great performances. The only thing Moana 2 has to get right is feeling like it was supposed to be a movie, not a TV series.