If Dwayne Johnson didn’t have any plans to show up at Disney‘s D23, well then, they should have just shut down the whole fan confab. Of course the voice of Maui in Moana 2 would put in some facetime to excite the 15,000 fans in the Honda Center who gave him a standing ovation Friday.
“This is the largest crowd that D23 has ever had in the history of Disney,” exclaimed the wrestler-turned-superstar actor, who led the crowd in the Hawaiian chant “Tay-ho!”
Auli’i Cravalho came onstage before Johnson and kicked off D23’s first session tonight with a live performance featuring Hawaiian dancers of the Moana 2 song “Who We’re Meant to Be.”
Cravalho told D23 host Nicole Yvette Brown that in the sequel, Moana is searching nearby islands for more people.
Johnson beamed, “Maui is singing again in keys that don’t exist and my hair looks fantastic.”
What he loves about the sequel, Johnson said, is that it’s about a “young girl who is empowered that there’s more in life than what’s in front of her.”
“Wait till you see the villains we have in this one, it’s the storm of all storms.”
Johnson then threw it to a new trailer, singing “You’re Welcome” to great cheers.
See the trailer above and new poster below.
The new trailer shows Maui and Moana facing off with a big typhoon storm as she goes on a quest to find more of her people in the lost islands of the Pacific.
Johnson then invited at Disney co-chairman Alan Bergman out to introduce a new live-action docu sports movie that Johnson is overseeing: “I want you to take a look at our next big jam.” Fire lit from the stage and it was introduced that it was Disney’s Monster Jam. Johnson said he went to Bergman and Disney for the idea of a live-action monster truck film. “They’re eccentric and crazy drivers,” exclaimed Johnson.
Moana 2 hits theaters on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, November 27.
Johnson closed out Disney’s big CinemaCon panel back in April in Las Vegas. At that time, he was preceded onstage by a group of Hawaiian dancers and percussionists.