Moana 2 directors love her as much as you do - that’s why they made it a feature film, not a Disney+ series

Four weeks ago, Disney introduced a top 10 carousel to the homepage of its streaming service. Today, Moana is in spot two, trailing only Deadpool & Wolverine which was released on Disney+ 10 days ago.

Moana is not high on the list because it’s less than a week out from the release of the sequel. It’s high on the list because it’s always high, even before the public was let in on the secret.

Moana remains one of Disney’s most popular titles on streaming, eight years after its premiere.

When the head of Disney’s animation unit, Jennifer Lee, announced in 2020 that the studio was in development on a sequel, it was originally to be a series. At the time, under the aegis of its former chief executive, Bob Chapek, Disney was all-in on growing its fledgling streaming platform and everyone was to be in service to that mandate.

By February this year, Chapek was more than a year out the door and Disney swung its priorities back to theatrical. The series was no longer a series, it was being elevated to where it belonged, on a big cinema screen.

When the first trailer came out in May, it hit 178 million views in the first 24 hours. The fans were screaming for it.

“Moana 2 is epic and it is the kind of story that can only be done justice on the biggest screens,” co-director Dana Ledoux Miller said.

“Changing the format really allowed us to go bigger, to go bolder and to push Moana to places that, honestly, a small screen couldn’t sustain.”

The series was well in the works when the call to change it was made but the original story is still the one that will hit cinemas this week. It’s just evolved along the way.

Co-director Jason Hand explained: “A feature film has to focus more on the main character and one of the things that we benefited from in our series was we have all these new crew characters that come along with (Moana) and we had a chance to workshop them through the series format when it became a feature.”

That means those new characters had a richer backstory and grounding that had already been developed for a format with a longer timeframe — which may not have been if Moana 2 had started as a film.

“Every time we screened (the series) here (in the theatrette at Disney’s Burbank headquarters) and saw it on the big screen, from everyone watching the question was always ‘Why is this not a movie?’,” recalled co-director David Derrick Jr.

Set three years after the first film, Moana (Auli‘i Cravalho) is now 19 years old and a leader among her people on the island of Motunui. At the end of the first film, after defeating Te Ke with the help of demi-god Maui (Dwayne Johnson) and restoring the heart of Te Fiti she went home. But she didn’t stay put for long, serving as the chief wayfinder for her people as she ventured across the Pacific Ocean.

When Moana 2 picks up the story, she still hasn’t found anyone out there, despite the ancestral stories of island communities coming together which leads Moana to wonder if there is a force keeping everyone apart.

She now has a little sister, Simea, and she sets off on an expedition with a crew that includes her pets Heihei and Pua, as well as Loto (Rose Matafeo), Kele (David Fane) and Moni (Hualalai Chung).

“In the first film, Moana defeated a lava monster,” Ledoux Miller said of upping their game.

“We’re not going smaller than that. Moana is older, the challenges she experiences emotionally with her family, as a leader, are bigger. So, the challenges on her journey are that much bigger.

“The stakes are higher. If the first film was about reconnecting to who they were in the past, this film is about building a bigger future and a better future for sister Simea.”

Derrick Jr pointed out that while in the first film, Moana snuck off in the middle of the night, defying her family, this time she is sent off with everyone’s support.

This is about community and this is about coming together.

“She’s actually going out with a canoe built by her people, going out with a crew this time and then having that anchoring connection to Simea,” he said.

“Emotionally, this tells a much more mature story for Moana as she’s getting older.”

That sense of community was also at work behind the scenes. With three directors leading a production team of 600 people, there are a lot of people with their hands on this film, and for many of them, it’s personal.

Ledoux Miller, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jared Bush, and Derrick Jr both have Samoan heritage.

Derrick Jr joined Disney to work on the first Moana film as a story artist.

“It wasn’t just another movie for me,” he said.

“My heritage comes from Samoa and for me to have the opportunity to tell a story from this part of the world, to let everyone know that the people of Pacifica found the last discoverable land on Earth.

“People don’t realise this one-third of the Earth was an entire ethnosphere, all through the art and science of wayfinding.”

Ledoux Miller recalled when, a few months earlier, Cravalho spoke to the crew about the importance of Moana to her Hawaiian culture.

“There wasn’t a dry in the studio,” she said.

The big cultural piece to Moana and Moana 2 was The Oceanic Cultural Trust, a group of anthropologists, linguists, historians, musicians, botanists, dancers and tattoo masters from all over the Pacific that was heavily involved in consulting on all aspects of the films.

For the second film, the Trust added to its experts Native Hawaiian Nainoa Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a group Ledoux Miller credited for resurrecting traditional Polynesian voyaging.

That spirit of exploration of the world beyond what you know is key to the sequel. Derrick Jr relayed that for Thompson, a wayfinder getting lost is terrifying for them but it’s also when you discover who you really are.

“Getting lost is the pathway to magic,” Derrick Jr added.

With the obvious love for Moana already in the world, there is a lot of pressure on the sequel to do well, not just at the box office but for all the fans who want another chapter of the story to be just as great as the one they already love.

“Moana is a character who means so much to me as a person,” Ledoux Miller said.

“She changed the way Pacific Islanders were represented in film, forever. We can never go back to the day when people didn’t really understand who a Pacific Islander was because it’s one of the most streamed films to this day.

“And, so seeing 178 million watch that first teaser trailer in the first day, it was just a reminder. We love her so passionately but the world loves her too.”

Moana 2 is in cinemas on November 28

The writer travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Disney