EXCLUSIVE: Disney‘s Moana 2 landed on long-lead tracking Friday morning and it’s looking to do $100 million-plus over its Wednesday through Sunday opening during Thanksgiving week, $75M-$82M of that during its Friday-Sunday portion. These figures come from tracking service Quorum.
The first Moana in 2016 opened to $82M over five days, ultimately grossing $248.7M stateside.
If the Moana 2 forecasts stay firm, it’s a fantastic comeback for Disney, which has typically owned the Thanksgiving Day stretch with all-mass animated films, but hasn’t seen any big breackout since 2019’s Frozen 2 did $125M — the biggest take for any movie playing over the Thanksgiving holiday in U.S. and Canada.
A $100M+ result (Quorum technically sees $105M-$115M) would rep the biggest opening for a movie opening on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a record that currently belongs to Disney’s 2013 Frozen with $93.5M (Frozen 2 opened the Friday before Thanksgiving).
At its current three-day levels, Moana 2 is tracking bigger than Universal’s Wicked: Part One ($67M-$74M) and Paramount’s Gladiator II ($42M-$47M), per Quorum.
Says one industry executive observing the hot under-25 female figures on Moana 2, “This is the Frozen crowd.” Currently, men are lagging on Moana 2 but no bother, they were lagging on Inside Out 2 and that Disney pic went on to debut at $154.2M, the second biggest domestic box office opening of 2024.
These Moana 2 projections line up with the success of the marketing materials we’ve seen so far: The sequel’s first trailer become Disney’s most watched ever for an animated movie, clocking 178M views in 24 hours, besting that of Inside Out 2 (157M) and Frozen 2 (116M).
Back in February, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Moana 2 was happening, spawned from its development as a Disney+ series. The sequel is directed by Dave Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller with music by Grammy winners Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, Grammy nominee Opetaia Foa’i, and three-time Grammy winner Mark Mancina. Auli’i Cravalho is reprising the title role, and Dwayne Johnson is back as demigod Maui.
Note, the three big tentpoles over Thanksgiving —Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II — will be fighting over Imax screens.
Also to note: Quorum’s early forecasts on the three -day openings of Disney’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Deadpool & Wolverine were pretty much spot on at $50M+ and $200M+, respectively.
All projections above are for general tracking. Any family tracking by NRG or other services is typically an additional report. Disney had no comment on the projections.