NEW YORK (AP) – When you look at some of the numbers, it’s hard to believe Moana 2 was ever going to be anything but a movie.

When the teaser trailer for Moana 2 dropped in May, it was watched 178 million times in 24 hours. That’s more than Inside Out 2, more than Frozen 2, more than any animated Disney movie before.

A veritable ocean’s worth of anticipation is awaiting the sequel to 2016’s Moana, all proof that one of the more dramatic pivots in recent Walt Disney Co. history is paying off, big time. Moana 2 was originally intended to be a streaming series. Now, it’s steering toward being one of the fall’s biggest blockbusters. What can you say except you’re welcome?

When Bob Iger returned as chief executive of Disney in late 2022, one of his top priorities was shifting away from putting the studio’s most prized assets onto streaming. He wanted to put the focus back on the big screen – and all the ancillary benefits (including merchandising and streaming) that follow after. The series that directors David Derrick Jr and Jason Hand had worked on for more than a year would become Moana 2. The movie, which also added Dana Ledoux Miller as a director and co-writer, was only announced earlier this year. It’s opening on November 27.

“It became all hands on board,” Derrick said. “There’s a saying in Samoa: ‘All together or not at all.’”

Derrick and Hand, both veteran storyboard artistes at Disney, had effectively done their job too well. Their work convinced Disney executives to put the studio’s full weight behind a theatrical film, even though a live-action Moana remained in development. (That movie, directed by Thomas Kail, is set to open in July 2026).

“We developed the world, we developed the over-arching story that we’re still telling,” said Derrick. “We would screen it in our big theatre the way we watch all of us our projects here. There was a groundswelling, unanimous concert of everyone saying this needs to be on the big screen.”

“It was always going to be big,” added Hand. “It just kept on getting bigger.”

Moana 2 was at the nexus of a major shift for Disney and for Hollywood in calculating how to weigh theatrical and streaming. Different studios have different strategies and those are still evolving. But after rushing to throw as much content as possible on streaming services, companies like Disney began to rethink their approach.

This year, Disney has regained its box-office swagger, led by a pair of USD1 billion films in Inside Out 2 and Deadpool vs Wolverine. Moana 2 could make it three. But however well Moana 2 does, it’s not likely to hurt its appeal once it begins streaming. The most popular film on Disney+ last year? Moana. “We always felt that it deserved to be on the big screen” said Hand. “It’s the best way to tell a story.” But the shift for Moana 2, which returns Auli’i Cravalho as the voice of Moana and Dwayne Johnson as the voice of Maui, wasn’t easy.

First of all, that meant living up to the standard of the first film – one that Miller, who is of Samoan heritage, considers groundbreaking for its Pacific Islander representation.

“I knew as a writer that movie was going to change what was possible,” said Miller. “It was going to change the way when I walk into a room I was going to be able to pitch a story because people had a new understanding of what it meant to be of the Pacific.”

Miller, who founded the organisation PEAK (Pasifika Entertainment Advancement Komiti) as a way for Pasifika people to find community in Hollywood, is also a writer on the live-action Moana.

“My world has become all Moana all the time,” she said, laughing. Both films, the directors said, developed alongside each other, with many connections and shared cultural consultants.

Set three years after the original film, Moana 2 finds Moana again forced to head across the Pacific on an ocean adventure. But this time, she’s travelling with a crew, in a new canoe, and carrying new responsibilities. That includes her younger sister, Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda). “The way the first film connected her to her past, she’s now connecting everyone to the future,” said Derrick. “So we added and created all these new characters when it was in series and we got to know them in a deep way.” Hand compares the series development to a workshop for the new characters.

“Yes, it was a massive undertaking – probably more so than what we initially imagined,” Hand said. “But ultimately we were telling that same story. A lot of stuff that went by the wayside just naturally helped the story be its proper fighting weight.”

Now, Moana is joined by a wayfinding crew that includes the characters Loto (Rose Matafeo), an engineer; Kele (David Fane), a grumpy farmer; and Moni (Hualālai Chung), a historian and storyteller.

“What people don’t realise is that the people in the Pacific found the last discoverable land on Earth,” said Derrick, who also has ancestral ties to Samoa. “They created the largest cultural ethnosphere in the world prior to westward expansion – one third of the Earth, all through the art and spirituality and science of wayfinding. So for me, it’s very important that each one of these crew members display that Indigenous genius that it took.” – Jake Coyle

-- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin