Disney‘s animation ‘Moana 2’ has surpassed the 3 million moviegoers, becoming a box office success that surpasses the first film, becoming a ‘better younger sibling than the older one. Following ‘Inside Out 2’, ‘Moana 2’, animated sequels have been successively successful, raising expectations for the sequels to be released in the future.

According to the Integrated Computer Network for Movie Tickets on the 22nd, ‘Moana 2’, which was released on the 27th of last month and is now in its 4th week of release, has recorded a cumulative audience of 3,001,404 as of 9:30 am on that day. It has even surpassed the box office record of the previous film, ‘Moana’, which attracted 2.31 million viewers in 2017.

The global performance is even more spectacular. ‘Moana 2’, which earned $375 million in its first week alone, surpassing ‘Super Mario Bros.’, and became the highest-grossing global opening animated film of all time, has so far recorded $729.67 million and is ranked in the top 5 global box office grosses for 2024 releases.

Following ‘Inside Out 2’, which shook up the global box office this summer, Disney Pixar animation sequels including ‘Moana 2’ are attracting even more attention by succeeding in global ‘mega box office’. ‘Inside Out 2’, which was released nine years after the first ‘Inside Out’, which was released in 2015, not only took first place at the global box office for films released in 2024, but also beat ‘Frozen 2’ to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time. In Korea, it attracted 8.79 million viewers, far surpassing the first film, which attracted 497 viewers.

Accordingly, global fans’ expectations and interest are focused on the Disney Pixar sequel animations that will be released later. Next year, ‘Zootopia 2’ will meet the audience for the first time in 9 years since the first film. In 2026, ‘Toy Story 5’, a new series of ‘Toy Story’, which changed the history of 3D animation, will be released in theaters, and in 2027, the highly anticipated ‘Frozen 3’ will be released. Pixar is currently producing ‘Incredibles 3’, an innovative animation film with a human as the main character for the first time.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com