“Moana 2” and “Inside Out 2” being such huge hits this year does send a signal to Disney that they should probably stick to safe bets and just make sequels rather than produce original movies (like, well, “Inside Out” and “Moana”). We’re already seeing this happening in the recent news that Disney and Pixar are doubling down on sequels, and truly, there is little incentive for them to do original features when sequels do so well.
Then there’s the fact that “Moana” was initially planned as a series. There’s nothing inherently bad with this, of course, and the film does look as good as the original — which was part of the appeal and promise of Disney+ animated shows, that they’d use the same resources and assets as Pixar and Disney features. Except, even if the assets are the same, the crews are not. For instance, “Moana 2” was animated at Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Vancouver studio rather than at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California.Â
Sure, maestro and veteran Eric Goldberg supervised a team of animators that worked on Maui’s tattoos, just like he supervised the animation for it in the first film, and the Burbank studio reportedly had a lot of input. Still, the gargantuan success of the film may inspire Disney to outsource more movies going forward. It wouldn’t be the first studio to do so. After all, it was reported last year that DreamWorks would shift away from producing movies in-house and instead outsource its animation in a cost-cutting measure, with Canada-based Sony Pictures ImageWorks now acting as its new production partner.
This is significant because Sony ImageWorks is a non-union company (unlike Sony Pictures Animation), and while Walt Disney animators voted to unionize in 2023 for the first time, the Vancouver studio is not unionized. At a difficult time for animation workers, a time when the Animation Guild is fighting for basic rights for its members, and after everything the industry went through with the double strikes of 2023, this is a dangerous move for a medium that consistently saves the box office, but doesn’t get anywhere near the same treatment or respect as live-action.
/Film editor Ben Pearson broke down some of the numbers on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:
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