Long Range Forecast — November 27, 2024
Moana 2 | Walt Disney Pictures
Domestic Opening Weekend Range (5-Day): $120M – $150M
Disney is back to claim another Thanksgiving weekend with Moana 2, in theaters the Wednesday before the holiday and competing with the second weekend of Universal’s Wicked Part 1.
Though Moana ($248.7M domestic total) was only the fourth highest-grossing Disney animated film released in 2016—trailing March’s Zootopia ($341.2M domestic total), April’s live action/animation hybrid The Jungle Book ($364M domestic total), and December’s Finding Dory ($486.2M domestic total)—it arguably had the largest cultural impact of the set, largely propelled by its earworm-filled soundtrack (it was the fifth-best-selling album of the year in the U.S. and garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song) and the ongoing popularity of its main character, now part of the lucrative “Disney princess” canon.
It was popular enough for Disney to greenlight a live-action remake (slated for summer 2026) and a Disney+ TV sequel series…. and then, in February of this year, for Disney to announce that the series would be retooled into a movie and released theatrically some nine months later. With no reviews yet circulating, it’s hard to say to what extent Moana 2‘s episodic origins can be seen in the final product… but, even if the film should lack a strong, cohesive central plotline, it should have no problem out-earning its predecessor, which dominated Thanksgiving weekend (to the tune of a $56.6M three-day domestic opening and a $82M five-day domestic opening) in 2016. Indeed, that’s become the norm among Disney animated titles, with 2019’s Frozen 2 ($130.2M domestic opening, $477.3 domestic total), 2024’s Inside Out 2 ($154.2M domestic opening, $652.9M domestic total), 2018’s Incredibles 2 ($182.6M domestic opening, $608.5M domestic total), 2019’s Toy Story 4 ($120.9M domestic opening, $434M domestic total), 2016’s Finding Dory ($135M domestic opening, $486.2M domestic total), and 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet ($56.2M domestic opening, $201M domestic total) all out-earning earlier films in their respective series in the domestic market.
Disney could certainly use a win for its Walt Disney Animation Studios division. Following the release of 2019’s Frozen 2 the weekend before Thanksgiving, no Walt Disney Animation release has earned over $100M domestically. Of those, three also came out the Wednesday before Thanksgiving: 2021’s Encanto ($27.2M three-day domestic opening, $40.5M five-day domestic opening, $96M domestic total), 2022’s Strange World ($12.1M three-day domestic opening, $18.8M five-day domestic opening, $37.9M domestic total), and last year’s Wish ($19.6M three-day domestic opening, $31.6M five-day domestic opening, $63.9M total). (The other, March 2021’s Raya and the Last Dragon, opened day-and-date in theaters and on Disney+, opening to $8.5M and topping out at $54.7M domestically).
Strong pre-sales point the way towards a possible $150M-plus five-day opening weekend for Moana 2, which benefits from a lack of widely released family titles since late September’s The Wild Robot ($35.7M domestic opening) and Transformers One ($24.6M domestic opening). Moana 2 will need north of $652.9M over its total run to unseat this year’s Inside Out 2 as the highest-grossing animated film of all time.
Tracking Updates [as of 11/1]
| Release Date | Title | Opening Weekend Range | Distributor |
| 11/1/24 | Here | $3 – $7M | Sony |
| 11/8/24 | The Best Christmas Pageant Ever | $6 – $12M | Lionsgate |
| 11/8/24 | Heretic | $8 – $12M | A24 |
| 11/15/24 | Red One | $20 – $40M | MGM / Amazon |
| 11/22/24 | Gladiator II | $60 – $80M | Paramount |
| 11/22/24 | Wicked Part 1 | $100 – $130M | Universal |
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