Moana 2 directors Dana Ledoux Miller, Jason Hand, and David Derrick Jr. recently spoke about turning the upcoming sequel into a movie.
On Disney Investor Day in 2020, the company announced Moana: The Series, which would stream on Disney+ as a sequel to the hit 2016 movie Moana. Earlier this year, Disney announced that the series would be repurposed into a theatrically released animated feature film with Aulhi’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson confirmed to be reprising their roles as Moana and Maui.
What did the Moana 2 directors say about the change?
“I think where we’re so fortunate is that changing it from a TV series to a film just allowed us to go bigger,” said Miller in an interview with ComingSoon. “We really got to, we have 750 incredible artists, and we get to let them shine on the big screen in ways that you can’t when you’re watching it on a TV.”
When asked about the craziest thing that happened behind the scenes of the upcoming animated sequel, all three directors concurred that the conversion from a series to a movie was the stand-out.
“It doesn’t get much bigger than that,” said Miller.
Derrick added, “Yeah, that was crazy.”
Miller also teased what we could expect from Moana 2 and what separates it from the first film: “If the first film was about Moana reconnecting to her past, Moana 2 is about Moana building a new future for her people.”
“Three years after the events of the first film, Moana receives an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors and forms her own crew, reuniting with her friend, the demigod Maui,” reads the official synopsis. “As they journey to the far seas of Oceania to break the god Nalo’s curse on the hidden island of Motufetu, which once connected the people of the ocean, they confront old and new foes, including the Kakamora and underworld goddess Matangi.”
Disney’s Moana 2 releases in theaters on November 27, 2024.