Moana 2 has taken a break from earning 1.02 billion at the global box office to finally make its way to streaming after two months. It has just hit paid VOD, meaning you cannot stream it for free (“free”) on Disney Plus yet. Rather it has a huge $25 rental price of $30 to own it. Given how many times my son is going to want to watch it, I’m probably just going to shell out for a permanent copy for an extra $5.
With Moana 2 being such a massive hit, putting up $400 million more globally than the original and not being that far behind only Frozen 1 and 2, Moana 3 is happening, despite the fact that it has not yet been officially announced by Disney yet. Even though that’s the case, there are some things we know about it based on the last film and what’s brewing.
I covered this to a certain extent back in December, so here’s a refresher. Other than just the box office haul, Disney has praised the film to high heaven:
“Moana 2 has far surpassed our high expectations this weekend and is a testament to the phenomenon that Moana has become,” Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman said. “We’re fortunate to have an incredibly talented and hard-working creative team at Disney Animation who brought this new adventure to life, alongside our wonderful stars Auli’i and Dwayne and great new music. This is a moment to celebrate, and we’re thankful to all the moviegoers and fans who’ve helped make this a record-breaking debut.”
Something considered a “phenomenon” is not going to end after nearly doubling the haul of the first film, after all. Moana 2, however, did not review nearly as well as the first film, and there was a lot of criticism that its music was a downgrade from the iconic tracks of the original. But it made so much money that doesn’t really matter, even if Disney will no doubt want to improve the quality from here.
Outside of it being a huge success, the second film very much sets up a larger-scale conflict that would be the focus of a third film, as evidenced by a mid-credit scene (spoilers follow). Here’s my recap of it from back then:
“In that scene storm god Nalo is furious about being “betrayed” by Matangi and binds her with lightning shackles, uttering the line “This isn’t over…No, we’re just getting started.” Not the greatest writing, perhaps, but it very much indicates that Nalo will show up as the ultimate big-bad of the entire series in a third film (though not necessarily a final film).”
The storm god is likely to be the major villain of the third film and his defeat may spell the end of what could be a trilogy. Past that, we also may have some idea of a release date using Frozen as a mode. The dates there:
- Frozen 1 – 2013
- Frozen 2 – 2019
- Frozen 3 – 2027
So, extrapolating that for Moana, we have:
- Moana 1 – 2016
- Moana 2 – 2024
- Moana 3 – If it’s the same gap between 1 and 2, that would be 2032. And that is also the same eight year gap between Frozen 2 and 3. So yes, it’s easy to imagine it will be 2030 and beyond before it gets here.
Plenty of time to watch the first two movies 200 times with your kids, like I’m about to.
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