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“Moana 2” just crossed $1 billion at the global box office

It’s the third Disney movie from 2024 to have crossed the impressive threshold.

Tom Jones

According to Deadline, only 56 movies have managed to gross more than $1 billion in movie theaters around the world — and just one giant owns the production houses and studios that have been behind almost 60% of them: The Walt Disney Co. 

“Moana 2,” the long-awaited sequel to the most-streamed movie of the past five years, this week became the House of Mouse’s latest theatrical release to break the $1 billion barrier. The animation rounds out a stunning slate of three Disney flicks that debuted in 2024 to cross the threshold, the other two being “Deadpool & Wolverine” ($1.3 billion) and the cerebral sensation “Inside Out 2” ($1.7 billion).

For context, no other studio managed to meet the $1 billion mark even once last year.

Disney Movies crossed $1 billion box office
Sherwood News

With three movies released by Fox, which Disney picked up for $71 billion in 2019, and now “Moana 2,” the company has been behind 32 of the biggest releases in cinematic history. Franchises have formed the foundation for Disney, with two “Toy Story” movies, four Star Wars installments, and nine films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not including the “Spider-Man” movies made with Sony) all grossing more than $1 billion apiece.

While not all the releases are strictly family-friendly — the MPAA slapped last year’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” with an R-rating — many of Disney’s megahits have skewed toward younger audiences as kids worldwide tighten their grip on the global box office.

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Singer d4vd has been named the top trending person on Google in 2025

If you were asked to name the person who saw the biggest spike in Google searches across 2025, you might plump for a pope, perhaps, or a major political figure. Unless you were one particular Polymarket user, you maybe wouldn’t have put too much money on d4vd, a popular 20-year-old singer who reportedly remains an active suspect in the death of a teen girl.

However, when Google revealed its Year in Search 2025 today — a feature that, importantly, seems to reflect the figures and topics that have seen searches spike from last year, rather than overall search volume — d4vd, whose hits like “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me” have racked up billions of Spotify streams, sat atop the “People” section, beating Kendrick Lamar for the top spot.

Google’s top trending people
Google’s Year in Search 2025

As people in the business of making charts all day, you could say that we’re pretty au fait with Google Trends data. Even so, we can admit that Polymarket user 0xafEe may be a true savant when it comes to understanding what people are using the search engine for (though there are also allegations that the user is a Google insider or had other access to the information).

In any case, thanks to a series of what are now proving to be very prescient positions on Polymarket’s “#1 Searched Person on Google This Year” market, 0xafEe has made a medium fortune in the last 24 hours. There was a ~$10,600 “yes” position on d4vd himself — now worth more than $200,000 — as well as “no” positions across other candidates for the title, such as Donald Trump, Pope Leo, and Bianca Censori, all of which have profited substantially. All told, 0xafEe made just shy of $1.2 million on the market.

"Zootopia 2" Debuts With $273M In China

“Zootopia 2” is a rare smash hit for Hollywood at the Chinese box office

The Disney sequel just had the second-biggest foreign film debut ever in China, even as the country’s box office leans heavily toward domestic movies.

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