Disney's 'Moana' Teaser Trailer Arrives

With Walt Disney Animation Studios' Zootopia still enrapturing audiences around the world and racking up one of the highest box-office hauls for an animated film ever, the House Of Mouse's second offering this year, Moana, has quite a lot to live up to. Months back you would have been forgiven for thinking that the slightly more traditional Moana- a princess movie and musical, directed by the legendary duo of Ron Clements and John Musker (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid) - would have been the obvious candidate of the two for major success. 

So that brings us to our first proper look at the film, as the teaser trailer has been released at last. The teaser focuses pretty heavily on the character of the Demi-God Maui, being played in the film by Dwayne Johnson. 

The titular character of Moana herself- voiced by Auli’i Cravalho- barely features at all, and has no dialogue beyond "um".  However, this is actually pretty in line with past Disney marketing, where our first look at Frozen centred on Olaf, and Big Hero 6 on Baymax. The larger than life character of Maui- and the star-power of Johnson- will probably make this an easier sell to a wider audience. Later trailers will obviously let us see much more.

Beyond that, anyone who has seen the concept art would not be surprised that this is looking utterly gorgeous. The character designs look as appealing as ever (that adorable pig is going to sell an awful lot of toys) but the real star here is the location. As glimpsed best in the montage after Maui's introduction, the South Pacific setting is going to produce some stunning visuals. We also get to see Moana herself in action, in a shot that suggests that this particular Princess is going to be more than capable of looking after herself.

There's also a taste of the music, which this time comes from Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda alongside Opetaia Foa’i and Mark Mancina.

Earlier last week, a new poster was also released, which you can check out for yourself below. Moana arrives in North American cinemas November 23rd. The UK release will follow on December 2nd.