Moana 2 Smashes Box Office Records And Leads The Biggest Thanksgiving Ever

As far as the box office is concerned, this year's Thanksgiving holiday frame is the best Thanksgiving holiday frame ever. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Disney animated musical adventure "Moana 2" is leading a busy slate of blockbusters — including "Gladiator II" and "Wicked" — to the Thanksgiving holiday's biggest total box office take in history: more than $425 million in ticket sales from all the big screen movie offerings. That will smash through the previous Thanksgiving record ($316 million, in 2018), bringing theaters some much-needed relief after a rough 2024.

Half of that momentous box office total is coming from "Moana 2" alone. The sequel blew past last week's box office projections of a $125-135 million five-day debut and is now set to almost double that with a $215-220 million opening. Up until now the biggest Thanksgiving start of all time was "Frozen II" with $125 million, but "Moana 2" has left that record in the dust. It's amazing to think that this movie was originally planned as a limited Disney+ series. What a missed opportunity that would have been!

In other box office records, "Moana 2" will also top the five-day domestic opening record set by "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" ($204.6 million), which landed in theaters over the Easter holiday frame in 2023. That movie also came out a long way ahead of projections with a huge $204.6 million five-day debut, and ended up grossing $1.36 billion worldwide. It's already clear that "Moana 2" will beat the first "Moana" movie's global total of $643 million, but there's no telling how far it'll go.

Disney was confident enough in the "Moana" franchise to get this animated sequel into production alongside a live-action remake of the first movie. Star Dwayne Johnson, who is reprising his role as the trickster demigod Maui, was spotted filming scenes in Hawaii earlier this month, and principal photography wrapped last week.

Though not everyone is enamored with Disney's live-action remakes, the reason they keep getting greenlit is because, well, they keep making lots of money at the box office. "Moana" will have the shortest turnaround between the animated original and the remake yet (the first movie was released in 2016), but this week has definitely proven that there's an audience for it.

Returning to the present, Johnson is in two of this week's top five movies, as his live-action fantasy action-comedy "Red One" is set to rank at No. 4 in its third weekend. The box office math on that movie is even more complicated than usual, since it was originally planned for a straight-to-streaming release. It will add an estimated $19 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend for a running domestic total of $76.4 million.