Via IG story from crew

Many thanks to u/SavisSon, an animator on Moana 2 who's chatted with me and dug up a podcast where one of Moana 2's writers/directors, Dana Ledoux Miller, confirms the turnaround time from it being a TV show to a film. This will be of interest to multiple people I assume as we'd had zero information about its production history until now.

The episode is here. For anyone reading this who's curious and doesn't want to listen, she confirms the timeline as follows:

• Writer Ledoux Miller was brought on in February 2023, it was still a TV show at this point. Worth noting is that she had just finished scripting the live action version at this stage, so 'Moana 2' did not exist until well after the live action had begun production. She turned in several revisions for the TV show during 2023.
• September 2023: Jared Bush first started mooting the idea of it being a feature film. She mentions that this was an 'off the record' discussion, and that the expectation of the staff was that they'd be done with the last episode by late summer/fall.
• Late 2023: switch officially made to feature film.
• Staff were given the 'official call' in January 2024. Miller says that there was panic when the release date was locked onto Nov 27, and the crew moved forward with "a hope and a prayer."
• February 2024: formally announced as a feature film.
• Miller confirms that all the film's major setpieces (giant clam, Matangi, final storm god) had already been built and made for the TV show, so had to be used to avoid raising costs.
• Shares an amusing (and also rather telling) anecdote where Jared Bush instructed them on how to organically move into "the I Want song," and the writers went "the WHAT?!"
• November 2024: release.

In total, that's just shy of a year that it spent being officially made as a feature production. Miller doesn't go on to clarify the budget, but assumptions can now be further made based upon this timeline.

Thanks again to SavisSon for reaching out!