As we told you recently, Disney‘s Moana 2 is heading to the best five-day opening ever at the Thanksgiving box office. We gave the six-weekend projection from Quorum, and this morning tracking service NRG — which reports three-weekend-out forecasts — is saying the Hawaiian princess sequel is going to clear $135M over Wednesday-Sunday. That would best the record $125M five-day (not opening) Thanksgiving haul of Frozen 2 ($125M) and the $93.5M five-day opening of Frozen.
Presales for Moana 2 are ahead of Inside Out 2 and Incredibles 2, which opened to $154.2M and $182.6M (3-day), respectively. Tickets went on sale October 28 for the pic starring Auli‘i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson.
Moana 2 is hot with millennials, who remember the original 2016 movie fondly, as well as kids 6-11 (even boys want to see it) and general audiences ages 12-54. AMC CEO Adam Aron said on an earnings call that he heard the sequel could eclipse Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which is the highest-grossing movie of 2024 at $652.9M stateside.
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The first Moana opened to $82M over five days, ultimately grossing $248.7M stateside.
Disney CEO Bob Iger announced back in February 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.
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We’re poised to see the biggest Thanksgiving on record over the five days. There’s also Wicked and Gladiator II opening to $80M and $65M, respectively, on the weekend before Turkey Day. Those respective Universal and Paramount movies are expected to play strong throughout the holiday as Black Friday is one of the highest-grossing days of the year at the box office.