How Disney Toon Sequels Went From Almost Never to Almost Always

Once upon a time, the mere notion of a Walt Disney (or Pixar) toon was a big enough deal to be an event-sized franchise or box office-bankable brand unto itself.

Moana 2 earned another $4.4 million on Wednesday. That’s down an understandable -45% from its “cheap ticket Tuesday” $8 million day-seven gross (and, again understandable, -92% from its $58 million opening day) while bringing its cume to $244 million domestic and $440 million worldwide in just over a week. It’ll pass the unadjusted $248 million domestic cume of Moana (around $308 million adjusted for inflation) by late tonight or early tomorrow. This already makes it Walt Disney Animation’s second-biggest sequel in raw domestic earnings. It has a minute before catching up to the $529 million global total of Ralph Breaks the Internet and several minutes before getting anywhere near Frozen II’s $1.45 billion cume. It’s already in third place globally and second place domestically. That’s because Disney seldom produced theatrical sequels to their theatrical animated films. Moana II is only their eighth such offering since 1990 and the third since 2018. What once was rare is now business as usual.