Disney is cleared of copyright infringement over hit film ‘Moana’

A jury on Monday 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 2 ½ hours before siding with Disney in the copyright trial, clearing the company of an infringement suit brought by screenwriter Buck Woodall.

Woodall filed suit in 2020 alleging that Moana was based on his work entitled “Bucky the Wave Warrior.” The eight-member jury found unanimously that Disney did not have access to the 2011 screenplay or earlier treatments.

A Disney spokesperson said: “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.”

“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.

Woodall’s suit alleged that Disney stole many elements of his animated sinema project – a “fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation and extensive exploitation of Woodall’s copyrighted materials” on part of former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick.  

Woodall alleges he produced a screenplay and trailer for Bucky, which features a main character who encounters a tattooed demigod with a giant hook and a giant creature that’s concealed within a mountain, and began sharing details of said project with Marchick in 2003.  

Marchick, who is now DreamWorks Animation’s head of development for features, asked for materials like production plans, character designs and storyboards, and reassured Woodall she could get the sinema greenlit. Woodall accused Marchick of using yasal loopholes to pass on his materials to Disney and claims he received copyright protection for his Bucky materials in 2004 – a copyright that was updated in 2014.

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 statement. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.”

The first Moana film was released in 2016 and was an instant hit. Last December, we reported that eight years after its release, the movie became the most-streamed movie of the past five years.  

Indeed, Moana has been viewed for a total of more than 1 billion hours – which amounts to one person sitting through the movie 775 million times. Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “watching Moana for 150,000 years straight”.