Disney didn't copy 'Moana' from a story of a surfer boy
LOS ANGELES
A jury on March 10 quickly and completely rejected a man’s claim that Disney’s “Moana” was stolen from his story of a young surfer in Hawaii.
The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about two and a half hours before deciding that the creators of “Moana” never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for “Bucky the Surfer Boy.”
With that question settled, the jury of six women and two men didn’t even have to consider the similarities between “Bucky” and Disney’s 2016 hit animated film about a questing Polynesian princess.
Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative, who worked for a different company on the Disney lot, but the woman testified during the two-week trial that she never showed it to anyone at Disney.
“Obviously we’re disappointed,” Woodall's attorney Gustavo Lage said outside court. “We’re going to review our options and think about the best path forward.”
In closing arguments earlier Monday, Woodall's attorney said that a long chain of circumstantial evidence showed the two works were inseparable.
“There was no ‘Moana’ without ‘Bucky,’” Lage said.
Defense lawyer Moez Kaba said that the evidence showed overwhelmingly that “Moana” was clearly the creation and “crowning achievement” of the 40-year career of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors behind 1989's “The Little Mermaid,” 1992's “Aladdin,” 1997's ”Hercules” and 2009's “The Princess and the Frog.”
“They had no idea about Bucky,” Kaba said in his closing. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.”
“Moana” earned nearly $700 million at the global box office.
A judge previously ruled that Woodall’s 2020 lawsuit came too late for him to claim a piece of those receipts, and that a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over “Moana 2” — which earned more than $1 billion — must be decided separately. That suit remains active, though the jury's decision does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also overseeing the sequel lawsuit, said after the verdict that she agreed with the jurors' decision about access.
“We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement.
