The team behind Moana 2 is ready to welcome viewers back into the powerful world of the title characters and her fellow islanders.
During a press event held Monday at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, Calif., the filmmakers debuted the first 30 minutes from the sequel to the 2016 animated feature. After screening the footage, co-directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller and co-writer Jared Bush took the stage to tease the new adventures for Moana that take place three years after the first movie.
Hitting theaters Nov. 27, Disney’s Moana 2 will include five new original songs written by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, and the first 30 minutes of the film features two of the musical numbers. Reprising their voice roles from the original Moana are Auli’i Cravalho as the lead character and Dwayne Johnson as demigod Maui.
“The opening song was really meant to be the biggest welcome back into the world of Moana,” Hand explained. “We really wanted to nail that energy. Obviously, the sound of the music is reminiscent from the first film, but also bringing us up to speed as to where Moana is at in her life now and where her island is at as well.”
Moana 2
Courtesy of Disney
The sequel’s story focuses on Moana answering a call from her ancestors and assembling a small crew to set out on a treacherous ocean voyage to find a mysterious island. A later scene was also screened, showing Moana and her friends facing off against the dangerous but diminutive Kakamora tribe.
“We really thought a lot about what it means to grow as a leader,” said Ledoux Miller. “As you mature, you learn that there are consequences to your actions. The things that you do, the choices you make, affect the people around you, and we really wanted to put Moana through her paces as a leader and have to see who she would have to be on the water when she had people with her.”
That said, there is also time for playfulness on the journey. “We wanted to have fun, and what’s more fun than a bunch of people who don’t know how to be on the ocean, having to go up against the biggest tests possible?” Ledoux Miller added.
The project was initially planned as a Disney+ streaming series until Disney chief Bob Iger announced that Moana 2 had instead evolved to become a feature film. The team discussed how the project changed over the course of its path to the theatrical release.
“The main core characters and the main themes are the themes that we were setting up to tell with the series,” said Derrick. “But then we had to rightsize it in a very dramatic way to make sure it was servicing a feature format. So there were some things that didn’t exactly fit from the series to the feature. But for me, one of the things I love is that everything blends through Moana and her personal growth.”
Bush agreed and added, “All of us felt like, it’s this unbelievable opportunity to tell this story on a very epic scale, which, in the world of Moana, is exactly what you want. The series version also had that epic quality, but knowing this version is going to be shown on the biggest screens in the world, it really allowed us to go all in on all of that.”
The film’s team debuted the latest trailer last month at D23, where Cravalho and Johnson were involved in a musical presentation. Before that, Disney shared Moana 2 footage and behind-the-scenes stories during a presentation at the Annecy Animation Festival in France in June.
“Maui is singing again — singing in keys that don’t exist,” Johnson told the D23 crowd. “And my hair looks fantastic in Moana 2.”
Also returning from the original Moana voice cast are Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger and Alan Tudyk. Christina Chen and Yvett Merino serve as producers.
