'Moana 2' rides its way into box office history. How the animated sequel pulled it off.

Thanksgiving was especially bountiful at this year’s box office, thanks in no small part to the record-breaking performance of Disney’s Moana 2.

The sequel to the 2016 original animated film starring Auli'i Cravalho as the voice of the titular Polynesian wayfinder (don’t call her a princess!) who this time goes on a quest with demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to break a curse, posted not only the highest Thanksgiving Day debut of all time, at $28 million — nearly doubling the 2019 holiday’s premiere of Frozen 2 — but also the highest Thanksgiving weekend of all time, the highest five-day opening of all time in the U.S. and the highest-ever reported global animated opening weekend of all time.

If the original film wondered “How Far I’ll Go,” the sequel answered with the rallying cry “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” and a spectacular $389 million internationally over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday and weekend, helping the U.S. box office to a cool $424 million, its biggest haul ever for the holiday and a much-needed boost overall.

“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 in a statement. “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.”

This mega-release comes during a holiday time frame packed with blockbuster films Wicked and Gladiator II also doing monster business at U.S. movie theaters. With Universal’s Wizard of Oz reimagining pulling in over $262 million and Paramount Pictures’ Roman Empire fight fest landing more than $111 million since their joint “Glicked” debut on Nov. 22, Moana 2 has created a perfect storm at the box office by adding a whopping $225.2 million to the mix.

“The biggest highlight of all of this is that we just experienced the largest domestic Thanksgiving box office period in history, which in and of itself is incredible,” Jordan Hohman, vice president of project development at Phoenix Theatres, told Yahoo Entertainment. “And in this last week, the last full week of box office was the largest box office week in the United States since ‘Barbenheimer’ last summer.”

As the three blockbusters converged at multiplexes, the trio appeared to pull a box office hat trick rather than cannibalize each other.

“You have what we call counterprogramming here, where you have all these different niches being filled,” Hohman explained, “whether it be adults seeing movies like Gladiator [II] or Wicked, or families coming out to see movies like Moana [2].”

Daniel Loria, senior vice president of the Boxoffice Company, a theatrical data and analytics service, called the results extraordinary.

“Cinemas nationwide responded to consumer demand by allocating 75% of all showtimes in the United States to Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II, according to our data,” Loria said in a statement.

Disney is no stranger to Thanksgiving bounty at the box office. The studio now holds the top seven Thanksgiving debuts of all time and nine of the top 10. Those blockbusters include Frozen, Toy Story 2, Coco, Tangled, Moana and now Moana 2.

Many theater owners anticipated the success of the Polynesian-themed sequel, which had originally been conceived as a TV series to be streamed on Disney+ during the height of pandemic programming. A strategy shift to reprioritize theatrical runs over streaming was a gamble that paid off — both for Disney and for theaters.

However, Moana’s streaming presence helped build buzz for the sequel. The original 2016 film, also starring Cravalho and Johnson in the same voice roles with music by the Tony-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda (who didn’t return for the sequel), has seen continued success on Disney+ since it arrived on the streaming platform in 2019. Moana has since gone on to become a streaming juggernaut, with more than 1 billion hours watched, making it the No. 1 streamed movie of all time, according to Nielsen.

“It's just one of these movies that has really grown an audience over the years. The first one was really well received,” Hohman said. “There's a lot of families that have made this part of their movie collection.”

Brian Schultz, CEO of Look Cinemas, told Yahoo Entertainment that Moana 2 appealed to multiple audience demographics.

“It just built on the first story, had good music, and it was just really entertaining,” he said.

Because of Moana’s built-in audience, as well as tracking and presale numbers, theater owners prepared for a breakout success by “eventizing” the film — just as many had for Wicked and Gladiator II.

“We had a cocktail for both Gladiator and Wicked, and then we had a special popcorn for Moana for kids,” Schultz said, noting that his theaters topped Moana popcorn orders with gummy bears. “We try to eventize almost all the food and beverage offerings.”

Other multiplexes like B&B Theaters offered Moana-themed mocktails with coconut and cherry flavors for kids or people that choose not to drink. Phoenix Theatres also sold a Moana-themed blanket at concession stands that doubled as a hula skirt.

While the Thanksgiving holiday box office provided a healthy financial boost, partially offsetting a slow start to the year, which itself followed the dual actors’ and writers’ strikes of 2023, many theater owners appear optimistic about 2025, as long as the content is quality.

“A lot of the media think that the movie theater industry is kind of a decaying or dying industry, and it's really not the case,” Schultz said, “but we do need great content and great stories.”

With films like Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount Pictures’ Sonic the Hedgehog 3 right around the corner, Hohman is also optimistic.

“As we approach 2025,” he said, “I think that we're all very confident in what's to come.”