Disney’s record for the most views in a 24-hour period for an animated film is shattered with the new Moana 2 video. Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson will be back in the much awaited sequel, which opens in November. They will play Moana and the god Maui, respectively, from the wildly popular first movie. Originally intended to be a Disney+ sequel series, the tale eventually became Moana 2, a full-length theatrical feature.
In the 24 hours following its online release, the Moana 2 trailer garnered 178 million views, surpassing the milestones previously held by Inside Out 2, Frozen 2, and Incredibles 2. It consequently became Disney’s most-watched animated film trailer. Audience data was gathered from the following platforms: YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Apart from the remarkable quantity of views on the internet, the trailer has garnered a largely favourable response and excitement for the forthcoming sequel.
| Movie | Trailer Views in First 24 Hours |
|---|---|
| Moana 2 | 178 million |
| Inside Out 2 | 157 million |
| Frozen 2 | 116 million |
| Incredibles 2 | 113 million |
With record-breaking trailer viewership, Moana 2 is expected to do well in theatres. This is good news for Disney as their animated films have not done well at the box office in recent years, especially with Thanksgiving releases. Frozen II, Disney’s Thanksgiving release in 2019, did incredibly well at the global box office, earning over a billion dollars.
| Movie & Release Year | Worldwide Box Office |
|---|---|
| Frozen II (2019) | 1.453 billion |
| Encanto (2021) | 256.8 million |
| Strange World (2022) | 73.6 million |
| Wish (2023) | 255 million |
Disney saw critical and commercial setbacks with Strange World and Wish, and while Encanto became a cultural phenomenon, it did so only after it made its Disney+ debut, grossing a meagre $96.1 million domestically. As the eagerly anticipated follow-up to one of Disney’s most well-liked films of the previous ten years, Moana 2 should easily become the studio’s highest-grossing Thanksgiving release since Frozen II, given the initial success of its teaser.
As for whether Moana 2 can top Frozen II’s 1.4 billion box office haul, that’s hard to judge right now. Moana 2 is doing well in the trailers, but overall box office has declined from its pre-2020 levels. Positive word-of-mouth, which aided Pixar’s Elemental in its box office revival, will be the greatest advantage for Moana 2’s box office performance. This might provide Moana and Maui’s big-screen comeback with the extra push they need to break more Disney records.
