By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Moana 2 is a history-making blockbuster, teaming with Wicked and Gladiator II to contribute to the most successful Thanksgiving weekend in movie history. For Disney, it’s another sign that 2024 is a return to form for the company following a lackluster 2023 filled with bombs, and it’s even more impressive because there was never going to be a sequel to Moana. Developed as a Disney+ streaming series, Moana 2 became a feature-film success thanks to being rushed into production in February of this year, largely thanks to the overworked, non-union staff of Disney’s Vancouver studio.
From Streaming Series To Feature Film
On the one hand, it’s a successful first feature film for the Vancouver animation studio, but on the other, it only came about because of the sudden decision of Disney executives to bring it to theaters following the initial test screening. If you’ve seen Moana 2, you can tell where the seams are holding the television plotting together. It’s a testament to the talent of the creative team behind the film that it’s as good as it is and is considered “pretty good” by most fans and critics, but kids, who loved the first film don’t worry as much about things like a disjointed narrative or songs that fail to match the bombast and vigor of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score from the original.
I know that kids are the target audience, and it’s great that they love it, but behind the scenes of the rush job, there’s another problem, and it’s one that has helped contribute to labor strikes in the past. Disney’s Vancouver studio is not part of a Union, while the main animation studio in Burbank is, which means one of the largest companies on the planet found a way to make a record-setting movie while underpaying creative talent. If other studios follow suit in utilizing non-union talent by making the “sudden decision” to go from a television series to a feature film, which could have different pay structures, it’ll further punish animation studios that have been overworked and underpaid for decades.
Underpaid And Overworked
Moana 2 isn’t the first animated film to go from a television series to a feature film; notably, The Secret Life of Pets 2 was conceived as a series, but at least this time, it was converted early in production. Again, if you’ve seen the film, you can tell it’s three distinct stories welded together, and the pre-production woes are evident on screen, but it wasn’t rushed in a matter of months. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Illumination pays its animators less than most studios, thanks to being based in France and having a history of low budgets, but unlike Disney, there was no bait and switch.
Disney has already been in trouble over its treatment of VFX studios forced to work twice as fast, for half as much, on Marvel films, including Wakanda Forever and Quantumania, so taking advantage of an animation studio is par for the course. Moana 2 needs to remain an outlier, and other studios can not follow suit. The real problem will come when other studios start looking around their vaults to cobble together a feature film out of discarded animated parts; after all, if Disney is rewarded for it, why won’t it work for them?