Moana 2 is riding the tide to $1 billion, and if you want to watch it at home on Disney Plus… let’s just say, we know the way.
Disney has dominated cinemas this year. The two highest-grossing movies of 2024 both come from the House of Mouse: Inside Out 2 ($1.698 billion) and Deadpool & Wolverine ($1.3 billion), and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has a spot on the top 10 with just shy of $400 million worldwide.
Sequels are ruling the roost, and it’s a trend that’s already continuing with Moana 2’s box office figures – it’s already made nearly $400m and it could break the billion barrier within two weeks (it’s only competing against Wicked until Sonic 3 and Mufasa hit cinemas).
Families all across the world are piling into theaters to see it, but whether you want to re-watch it at home or you’d rather wait until it’s on streaming, it’s definitely coming to Disney Plus next year.
When is Moana 2 on Disney Plus?
Moana 2 will be available to stream on Disney Plus by March 2025. There’s a chance it could be even earlier, but given its success in cinemas already, don’t expect it on streaming any time soon.
While this hasn’t been confirmed by Disney, you can look at the studio’s other releases to see a streaming timeline. Its new movies tend to be given a 100-day theatrical window before they come to the streaming service, if not a little longer; Deadpool & Wolverine took 110 days, while Inside Out came to Disney Plus after 103 days.
Moana 2 hit cinemas in several territories on November 27, so its 100-day window would end on March 7. That’s a Friday, but Disney usually drops its movies on streaming on Wednesdays, so March 12, 2025, seems like a sensible bet.
How to watch Moana 2 now
There’s only one way you can watch Moana 2 right now: in a movie theater.
As for whether it’s worth it, it’s hard to say. In our review, we said, “It’s possible that Moana 2 might have worked better as a TV show. But there would still need to be a lot of work done to this story, which ultimately relies on twists of fate and attempts at funny characters to keep itself afloat.”
However, it’s clearly a hit with moviegoers: it has a 65% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, but a much higher 85% audience rating.
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Funnily enough, Moana 2 was originally envisioned as a TV series that’d continue the story from the original film.
The film’s directors, Dana Ledoux Miller, David Derrick Jr., and Jason Hand, explained to Collider: “It was always the same overarching story and emotional journey that we wanted to tell every time. We wanted to introduce all these new characters.
“It was a story about connection and personal growth. What the series gave us was an opportunity to get to know these characters intimately, the way you can with a series, but what we were doing in the story just begged for a bigger and bigger screen.
“So, as soon as we funneled all of the learnings from our new characters through Moana’s journey, it actually just strengthened Moana’s growth and the theme of the story. So, there wasn’t, for me, anything left out from the series. We were able to learn things from the series that just supercharged the feature.”
When will Moana 2 be released on digital?
Moana 2 is expected to be released on digital platforms sometime in January 2025.
You won’t need to wait until its Disney Plus release to watch it at home, but if you want to buy or rent it digitally, it’ll likely be available on-demand around two months after its theatrical release.
Be warned, though: it isn’t cheap. When Deadpool & Wolverine dropped on VOD, it cost $29.99 to buy and $24.99 to rent (seriously, just spend the extra five bucks).
In the meantime, check out our breakdown of Moana 2’s ending, whether or not Moana is a demigod, and our list of the best movies of 2024.
