Animation seems to be one of the hottest forms of entertainment currently, as looking at the box office for 2024, the biggest film of the year by a significant margin is Inside Out 2, but the top 10 is also headlined by Despicable Me 4 and Kung Fu Panda 4, with additional films like The Wild Robot and The Garfield Movie making hundreds of millions of dollars around the world too during their theatrical runs. Now it looks like Moana 2 is set to make serious waves and soon become one of the year’s biggest movies.
We say this because following its opening weekend, which was an important one as it was the Thanksgiving weekend for the Americans, the animated Disney sequel managed to draw in $386 million. That’s enough to already see Moana 2 be 2024’s 11th biggest film and puts it less than $200 million away from cracking the year’s top five films. That might seem like a big jump, but animation has proved so far this year that it has legs and can continue to generate good money following its opening weekend.
This success for Moana 2 helped deliver a record-breaking weekend for the American market, which saw its largest Thanksgiving weekend for revenue ever by topping $420 million, as per The Hollywood Reporter. Moana 2 accounted for $221 million of that, with the rest made up of additional films including Wicked and Gladiator 2.
Speaking about those two films, Wicked continues to find success with almost $360 million to its name now globally, while Gladiator 2 is at $320 million. While they are both good amounts of money, you have to account for the production costs in the first place, which for Gladiator 2 is claimed to be between $210-250 million meaning $320 million, after marketing fees that often mirror production costs, is not really a success. Wicked however was claimed to cost around $150 million to make, meaning it’s far more successful already, while Moana 2 is suggested to have a similar production fee of approximately $150 million.
We’ll have to see just how high the ceiling is for the Moana sequel, but as it stands, it looks like we could be watching another box office behemoth make its splash around the world.
Thanks, Box Office Mojo.