Director Jason Hand discusses his path from CalArts to helming Disney’s latest hit animated musical comedy - fast approaching $1 billion at the global box office – that took advantage of the studio’s history of teamwork, mentorship, and artistic collaboration.
As we begin 2025 and head into the heart of awards season, Disney’s hit animated musical comedy, Moana 2, is fast approaching $1 billion at the global box office and sits on most critics’ list of best animated films of 2024.
Directed by Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller and David G. Derrick Jr., from a screenplay by Ledoux Miller and Jared Bush (who wrote the original film), the Moana sequel reunites lead characters Moana (voice of Auli‘i Cravalho) and Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson) three years later for an expansive new voyage alongside a crew of unlikely seafarers. After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced.
Originally in production as a Disney+ streaming series with Derrick writing and directing, Moana 2 soon morphed into an animated feature. It marks the first time Walt Disney Animation Studios has produced one of its films from two locations - Burbank and Vancouver – with artists and technicians split between both locations.
SoCal native Hand, born and raised in Simi Valley, has been working at Disney Animation since 2005, though he began his Disney career at Disneytoon Studios after graduating from CalArts in 2002. He had previously worked hands-on as a model maker at VFX studio Dream Quest Images, located in Simi Valley, right out of high school before he headed to CalArts. “I read in a magazine that there's a company Dream Quest Images in Simi Valley, and I literally went and knocked on the door and got a job as a PA, delivering film in the middle of the night,” he shares. Disney eventually bought Dream Quest, renamed it The Secret Lab… but that’s a tale for another day.
Hand’s Disney career exemplifies how the studio encourages artistic development and mentorship, learning by doing across various projects. “After I left CalArts, I worked on a bunch of films and learned so much along the way,” he notes. “I started my career as a 2D layout artist. And so, I learned about staging. I learned about work-booking to make shot cuts. And then I really got bit by the story bug. Disney Animation actually put me through a story training program. You pitch an idea, and if they pick you, you'll get a paid internship basically to go through a story training program. That was before Big Hero 6. I've definitely grown up in the Disney apprenticeship program, and I'm proud of that.”
He continues, “Many of my teachers at CalArts were people that were directing films here, like Don Hall and Steve Anderson. And Mark Kennedy, who was the head of story. My Disney roots are deep and long, at least for my age. I also gained a lot from the knowledge of people around me. On the first Moana, Don Hall and Chris Williams were incredibly generous with their time in teaching me. Same thing with those two on Big Hero 6.”
“And,” he adds, “I will say one thing… when I came to Disney animation and I met Burny Mattinson [his 70-year studio career made him the longest-serving employee – he passed away in 2023], he was the cream of the crop. Just talking to him was incredible. And then about two weeks later, after I hadn't seen him again, he walked past me and he said, ‘Hi, Jason.’ I pretty much fell over because I'm like Burny Mattinson just said hello to me and knows my name, and I can't think of a higher compliment than that.”
Hand’s work as a story artist on Moana included a major contribution to Maui’s uncontrollable shape shifting “Shark Head” scene; he played a key role in creating and storyboarding the laugh-out-loud DMV scene, featuring a glacially slow sloth clerk, for Zootopia. Hand goes on to note that he learned some particularly strong lessons as head of story on Encanto, including how to make a musical, which he put to good use after getting a chance to direct Moana 2. His work on “The Family Madrigal” opening song sequence for Encanto earned him an Annie Award in 2022 for Best Storyboarding-Feature.
When first announced in December 2020, Moana 2 started life as a 5-episode Disney+ mini-series. A bit over a year later, David Derrick Jr. was named writer and director. The series was moving ahead alongside the live-action Moana remake feature that the original animated Moana writer Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller had written before Ledoux Miller moved onto the series. Positive feedback within the studio eventually led to the production shifting gears to start 2024 as a feature film sequel with Hand directing along with Ledoux Miller and Derrick.
Asked about the challenges not only of producing a sequel, but a musical, Hand explains that sequels can be very tricky. “First and foremost, we had an edict that we don't like sequels that undo the first film. I don't like when they pretend that the first film didn't happen. So, we started by saying the first film happened, the characters’ growth happened, and from that point forward, we get to see what’s next. And that was really important to us. That includes everything from who and where Moana is, where her island is, where her relationship with Maui is, and what this new journey is going to be about.”
“One beautiful and important idea from the first film was that Moana brought her people back to the sea,” Hand says. “We always talked about the ocean connecting us in the first film, which is a very real idea for the people of the Pacific. Their islands are not divided by the ocean. They're very much connected by it. I love that idea, but we never saw that happen. We only heard about it, though we knew that there were other people on other islands, or at least that implication. And because that idea was left undone in the first film, we really wanted to continue from there. In earlier story development, the islanders find people and they connect. We considered, is that what the story is about, or do we continue to push on the idea that there are other gods out there that want to keep people disconnected. And if so, why? And so, that's where we ended up landing.”
One of the film’s key songs, “Beyond,” speaks to that very idea of connection and that Moana becomes a leader of her people. “We wanted her to have a crew and be seen as a leader in her community,” Hand details. “We say that she's a leader, but we haven't seen that yet. So, it gave us some options to play with that didn't repeat from the first film. Her community is there to send her off on this incredible journey. She's there doing this for the future of her people. Those became the big story tentpoles at the beginning, alongside the obvious ones of having Auli'i and Dwayne come back, which was really important to me because those voices are so iconic.”
Noting the difficulties in musical storytelling, Hand remarks, “It's really hard to set up a song. How do you get the characters to that ripe moment right before a song starts? I feel like we spent the most time on that because we have these incredible demos that come in, and we know what the story point is, but how do you build that thing that’s like a tea kettle that has so much energy that it needs to burst into song? That takes a long time to get right, particularly in a moment for songs like ‘Beyond’ or even ‘Can I Get a Chi-Hoo.’”
For Hand personally, story development involved drawing. Lots of drawing. Talking about story, pitching story, drawing key ideas. “Similar to my work on Encanto, early on, I pitched ideas,” he shares. “We talked about the script. In the early days, because it was being developed as a TV show, we had a Bible, which was a very detailed outline that was building on these thematic ideas of continued evolution for Moana, and then this idea of connection. That was the very early bedrock that we continued to craft on. But that involved stacks of drawings. Drawing is my life. That is how I think. I draw people in the story room. We draw ideas. We draw staging ideas. We just draw and draw. From a visual standpoint, I think that's what Don Hall and Chris Williams really imparted to me, that you can be both a person that's creating the story and drawing the story at the same time.”
“In fact, that's my favorite part of the process,” he continues. “I draw all the time, but I also talk a lot about the story, and I write a lot of things down. I really like to construct the big concepts of something and really understand them. What seems so simplistic now, but eluded us for a long time, was that the first film is about Moana connecting to the past, and this film is about an unknown future that she has to create. And I loved that once we had it. But first, we went through a lot of ideas. We did a lot of beat boarding. We did a lot of character exploration of the relationships between Moana and Simea [Moana’s little sister] and how these new characters act.”
Hand goes on to emphasize that the development process, like production, is a team effort and a good idea can come from anywhere. “It's not a platitude, it's the real deal,” he says. “We had very young junior board artists on this show, and we had very senior board artists on this show. And some of the best ideas came from the people you would never expect to hear them from. You have to be open to wherever the idea comes from. I’ve seen that on every one of the films I've worked on here.”
He goes on to share a very personal experience that sums up Disney Animation’s dedication to nurturing and training their talent to grow along with the studio. “I was working on Princess and the Frog in layout, and word was they were possibly going to make a short film for the DVD. I had a bunch of ideas I wanted to pitch, and I went into Peter Del Vecho’s office, the producer [now the studio’s Sr. VP of Production], and I said, ‘Hey, I'm Mr. Nobody layout dude. Can I pitch some story ideas in a room with our studio leadership?’ And he looked at me, and he's like, ‘Well, how are you going to do it?’ I'm like, ‘Well, I just made some boards.’ And he looked at me, he said, ‘Okay, sure.’ And that imparted in me something really important. I thanked him for doing that because it put such wind in my sails and said to me that no matter who you are or where you're at, you can be part of this project and part of the process. And so, I learned early on… collaboration, always collaboration.”
To further illustrate the power of collaboration, Hand goes on to mention that early on in the making of the film, Bush said to him, “You have a ton of resources you're not using quite yet.” “Perfect example,” he says with a smile, “of what ended up happening was, I obviously know Byron Howard very well. I was the head of story on Encanto. He's an incredible animator and an incredible person. And one day I said to myself, ‘Wait a second. I should show Byron the animation we're working on and get his notes. Why am I not doing that? That's insanity.’ So, I’m like, ‘Hey, Byron, would you mind?’ And of course, he said ‘Yes, I would love to take a look.’ So, he comes in, gives some incredible notes and ended up joining the production as our animation director. We knew the story, we knew what it needed to be emotionally, but he helped us get it there. Just having the power of Byron Howard help us with the animation, watching him work with the animators, was one of the best things imaginable.”
Hand concludes by stressing that, “When you're in a room with a lot of smart people, it makes you smarter. And I know when I know something and what it needs to be, but I also know when I don't know something and get to say, ‘Hey, this is what we need this to be. Can we all work on this together and find a better solution?’ 10 out of 10 times, that worked. We have a very, very strong group of people at the studio that I could not be more impressed with. But I would say, now, I’m even more impressed than I was when I started this film.”
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
