Moana 2 smashed Thanksgiving box office records

Credit: Disney

Moana 2 just smashed a Thanksgiving box office record, answering an eight-year-old question of how far the Disney favourite will go.

The sequel to 2016’s Moana picked up a whopping $221 million domestic over the five days of the holiday (Wednesday to Sunday), which trounces the records set by fellow sequels Frozen 2 ($125 million) and Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($109 million).

There’s a lot of records smashed here, as The Hollywood Reporter has neatly chronicled— it’s the best opening result for a Disney film at the box office ever, a record previously held by Frozen 2 in 2019. It’s also reportedly the biggest takings for a film on the day of Thanksgiving; Moana 2 took home $28 million on the day while Frozen 2 made $15 million.

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In addition, Moana 2 is now the top box office five-day debut ever, surpassing last year’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie which made $205.6 million in the same amount of time (it’s still the highest grossing movie adapted from a video game ever).

Audiences appear to love the return to the island of Motunui, with Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson returning for the much awaited sequel. Rotten Tomatoes shows critics didn’t love Moana 2, with a 65 percent Tomatometer score; Mashable’s Belen Edwards described the film in her review as “almost as great as the original, except for one big thing.” But audiences have the film at an 85 percent approval rating — and they’re really showing up at the cinema.

Moana 2’s global takings are sitting at $386 million after its opening weekend; Frozen 2 made a total of $1.4 billion globally by the end of its run. The big, thematically-charged question is, can it go beyond its fellow Disney sequel?

Shannon Connellan is Mashable’s UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable’s Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about everything (but not anything) across entertainment, tech, social good, science, and culture.

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