On Monday, a federal jury dominated in Disney’s favor, swiftly dismissing a copyright lawsuit during which a author alleged that the corporate took his concepts to create Moana. As reported by the Related Press, a jury in Los Angeles reached its verdict in simply 2.5 hours, concluding that the group behind Moana by no means had entry to Bucky the Surfer Boy, a mission developed by author and animator Buck Woodall.
For the reason that jury discovered no proof that Disney’s filmmakers had seen Woodall’s work, they didn’t want to research whether or not the 2 tasks shared any inventive similarities. Woodall claimed that round 2004, he supplied his story define to Jenny Marchick, who was then employed at Mandeville Movies. On the time, Mandeville had a first-look settlement with Disney and maintained places of work on the corporate’s Burbank studio lot. Woodall testified that he despatched Marchick extra supplies within the years that adopted and was shocked by the resemblance when Moana was launched in 2016—a movie that went on to earn almost $700 million worldwide.
Nevertheless, Marchick acknowledged in the course of the trial that she by no means handed Woodall’s work alongside to Disney. The protection introduced messages during which she knowledgeable Woodall that she couldn’t help him together with his mission and later stopped responding to his follow-ups.
In closing arguments, Woodall’s lawyer, Gustavo Lage, identified the narrative components that Bucky the Surfer Boy and Moana share. He famous that each characteristic a younger protagonist embarking on a journey in an outrigger canoe throughout Polynesian waters to rescue their homeland. The tales additionally incorporate Polynesian traditions, together with ancestral spirits showing as animal guides, and embrace particular particulars comparable to a significant necklace, navigation by the celebrities, a lava goddess, and an enormous being hid as an island.
Disney’s lawyer, Moez Kaba, countered by asserting that elements of Polynesian mythology and customary literary tropes are “not copyrightable.” The corporate’s authorized group additionally submitted intensive documentation detailing the event strategy of Moana, which Kaba argued proved that administrators John Musker and Ron Clements created the movie independently. “They’d no thought about ‘Bucky,’” Kaba acknowledged in his closing remarks. “They’d by no means seen it, by no means heard of it.”
Woodall initially filed the lawsuit in 2020, in search of $100 million in damages. Nevertheless, a court docket ruling in November 2024 considerably restricted the case, decreasing it to Disney’s dwelling video distributor, Buena Vista House Leisure, attributable to a timing problem with the unique grievance. This lawsuit is one in every of two filed by Woodall—he initiated one other case in January 2025, specializing in Moana’s sequel, which was launched in November 2024. That case stays ongoing.
