Moana was a modest hit for Disney when it was released in 2016 – it was the 7th biggest hit of the year for the studio, behind the likes of Zootopia and Finding Dory. Moana certainly wasn’t a flop, but it’s also fair to say that it wasn’t an immediate smash hit for Disney.
But something very interesting has happened over the last few years. Since launching on Disney Plus, the original Moana has become far and away the most popular movie on streaming platforms. And when I say streaming platforms, I mean all streaming platforms, not just Disney Plus.
According to figures from Nielsen, between 2020 and 2024, Moana has been watched via streaming for 44.8 billion minutes, making it the No. 1 movie in all of streaming last year and the No. 1 movie over the past five years combined.
That’s obviously crazy, and really strange for a movie that came out so long ago. But another stat from the Nielsen report also caught my eye – the movie Encanto, which was released in 2021, is just behind Moana at 37.1 billion minutes of streaming between 2020 and 2024.
Zootopia is way down (“way down”) at only (“only”) 17.7 billion minutes of streaming between 2020 and 2024, despite that movie hitting 1 billion at the box office in the same year that Moana was released.
What can we take from this? Well, the one thing that Moana has that Zootopia doesn’t is catchy songs that kids love to replay. Maybe that’s the key to a smash hit on streaming.
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