The team behind Oceania 2 is ready to welcome viewers back into the powerful world of the main characters and their fellow islanders.
During a press event Monday at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, Calif., the filmmakers debuted the first 30 minutes of the sequel to the 2016 animated film. After screening the footage, co-directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller and co-writer Jared Bush took the stage to tease the new Moana adventures that take place three years after the first film.
Coming to theaters November 27, Disney's Oceania 2 will include five new original songs written by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, and the first 30 minutes of the film feature two of the musical numbers. Reprising their vocal roles from the original Moana are Auli'i Cravalho as the title character and Dwayne Johnson as the demigod Maui.
“The opening song was really meant to be the biggest welcome into the world of Moana,” Hand explained. “We really wanted to capture that energy. Obviously, the sound of the music is reminiscent of the first movie, but it also brings us into the present day where Moana is in her life and where her island is as well.”
Oceania 2
Courtesy of Disney
The sequel's story focuses on Moana answering a call from her ancestors and assembling a small crew to set out on a dangerous ocean voyage to find a mysterious island. A follow-up scene was also shown, showing Moana and her friends facing off against the dangerous but tiny Kakamora tribe.
“We thought a lot about what it means to grow as a leader,” Ledoux Miller said. “As you grow, you learn that your actions have consequences. The things you do, the choices you make, affect the people around you, and we really wanted to test Moana as a leader and see who should be in the water when there are people with her.”
That said, there’s also time for playfulness in the journey. “We wanted to have fun, and what’s more fun than a group of people who don’t know how to be at sea, having to face the biggest challenges possible?” Ledoux Miller added.
The project was initially planned as a Disney+ streaming series until Disney chief Bob Iger announced that Oceania 2 had instead evolved into a feature film. The team discussed how the project changed over the course of its journey to theatrical release.
“The main characters and the main themes are the themes that we were setting out to tell with the series,” Derrick said. “But then we had to scale them back very dramatically to make sure that they served a feature-length format. So there were some things that didn't quite fit from the series to the feature. But for me, one of the things I love is that it all comes together through Moana and her personal growth.”
Bush agreed, adding, “We all felt it was this incredible opportunity to tell this story on an epic scale, which, in the world of VaianaIt's exactly what you want. The series version also had that epic quality, but knowing that this version is going to be on the biggest screens in the world, it really allowed us to go all out on all of that.”
The film's team debuted its latest trailer last month at D23, where Cravalho and Johnson were involved in a musical presentation. Prior to that, Disney had shared Oceania 2 footage and behind-the-scenes stories from a presentation at the Annecy Animation Festival in France in June.
“Maui is singing again, singing in keys that don’t exist,” Johnson told the D23 crowd. “And my hair looks great in Oceania 2.”
Even going back to the original Vaiana The voice cast includes Temuera Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger and Alan Tudyk. Christina Chen and Yvett Merino are the producers.