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A California jury discovered that Disney’s Moana didn’t steal its idea from animator Buck Woodall’s decades-old screenplay about a young Hawaiian surfer.
After deliberating for over two hours on Monday, the jury ruled that no Disney employee had access to Woodall’s storyboards or script for an animated film titled Bucky, which he claimed to have shared with an executive in the early 2000s.
“We are obviously disappointed. We are going to review our options and think about the best path forward,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said.
A Disney spokesperson said they were “incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana” and “pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with plaintiff’s works”.
Woodall filed a suit in 2020 claiming Disney lifted many elements of a screenplay he had written for Bucky and alleging a “fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation and extensive exploitation” of his copyrighted materials by former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick.
Marchick’s stepsister is Woodall’s sister-in-law.
Woodall’s suit said he gave Marchick a screenplay and trailer for Bucky in 2003 as well as “extremely large quantities of intellectual property and trade secrets” after the director had convinced him she would get the film greenlit.
Marchick testified at the trial that she did meet Woodall as a favour to her sister, but she was “100 per cent confident” she never passed on any of his Bucky content to any employee at Disney, according to a report by Courthouse News Service.
She did speak to the studio about Woodall’s script but was informed that they didn’t accept outside pitches. She stated that she then helped Woodall meet an unidentified assistant at Disney TV animation who wasn’t interested.
Marchick said that she lost touch with Woodall after this point until he reached out in 2011 with a full-length screenplay for Bucky, which she was no longer interested in, believing it was “simplistic and juvenile”.
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Moez Kaba, the defence lawyer, identified that Marchick, now head of improvement at DreamWorks Animation, labored for rivals Sony and Fox for a majority of the period that Woodall had despatched her supplies for Bucky.
In closing arguments, Lage instructed the jury that there was loads of circumstantial proof that confirmed the affect Bucky had on Moana. “What number of coincidences are too many? When does a coincidence cease being a coincidence? There was no Moana with out Bucky,” he stated.
Kaba countered that Moana was the “crowning achievement” of John Musker and Ron Clements, who had additionally written and directed Disney hits like The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Hercules (1997), and The Princess and the Frog (2009).
“That they had no concept about Bucky,” Kaba stated. “That they had by no means seen it, by no means heard of it.”
Musker, in his testimony, denied all accusations he and Clements had indulged in plagiarism. He identified that the narrative of Moana was impressed by components from their earlier Disney initiatives like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules, which featured a teenaged hero overcoming obstacles and uncovering profound truths about themselves within the course of.
The jury was proven scenes from these movies to help the Disney declare.
Kaba cited reams of emails and paperwork monitoring Moana’s improvement and exhibiting that Musker and Clements took inspiration from the work of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville, whereas Woodall or Bucky weren’t talked about anyplace.
“You’ll be able to see each single fingerprint,” he stated. “You’ll be able to see your entire genetic make-up of Moana.”
Moana, launched in 2016, tells the story of an adventurous teenager named Moana, voiced by Auli’i Cravalho, who units sail on a harmful mission to avoid wasting her individuals. Alongside the journey, she meets Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, who turns into her information. The movie was a word-of-mouth success, grossing greater than £535m globally and streaming for over a billion hours on Disney+.
Moana 2, which launched in November 2024 and acquired an Academy Award nomination for greatest animated characteristic, sees the Polynesian teenager reunite with Maui for one more ocean journey after she will get an sudden name from her wave discovering ancestors. The sequel made $1.05bn worldwide, making it the third highest-grossing movie of 2024.
The jury’s choice revolved primarily across the discovering that Disney by no means noticed Woodall’s work, which meant they didn’t have to contemplate the alleged similarities between Bucky and Moana.
Woodall, who lives in Mexico, first sued Disney for a minimum of $100m in damages in 2020, however a California courtroom dominated in November that his submitting had come too late and dismissed it. Woodall was nonetheless capable of convey his go well with to trial towards Disney’s dwelling video subsidiary Buena Vista Residence Leisure, which launched the movie on DVD in 2017.
The discharge of Moana 2 allowed the animator to sue the manufacturing large anew on the identical foundation in January, looking for a minimum of $10bn in damages.
Although the go well with continues to be lively, decide Consuelo B Marshall, who can also be overseeing the sequel lawsuit, stated she agreed with the jury’s choice, a remark that doesn’t look constructive for the result in favour of Woodall.
