Disney beats Moana-based copyright infringement suit, again

Animator Buck Woodall's second attempt at suing Disney for allegedly stealing his ideas didn't get far from shore.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  March 10, 2025 | 10:24pm
Courtesy of Disney
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Disney beats Moana-based copyright infringement suit, again

A jury decided that Disney didn’t steal any of animator Buck Woodall’s ideas for Moana. Woodall has been suing Disney since 2020, hoping to prove that the heavily lawyered-up Mouse House stole the concept for its multi-billion-dollar animated series from his screenplay for the unproduced Bucky The Surfer Boy. Woodall claims in 2004, he pitched Bucky to Jenny Marchick, his brother’s wife’s stepsister, who, at the time, was Director of Development at Mandeville Film, which had a first-look deal with Disney. Over the next decade, Woodall continued to send Marchick updates to the script. Marchick, who probably won’t be doing any more favors for tenuously related family members, said she never showed the script to anyone at Disney. She did get Woodall a meeting with an assistant about working as an animator at the Disney Channel, but that didn’t involve Bucky. In perhaps the most relatable part of this story, she stopped responding to Woodall’s queries after telling him she couldn’t help him. Marchick is now head of features development at DreamWorks Animations and worked for Fox and Sony while Moana was being developed. So, if Marchick had handed it off to Disney, she saw none of the benefits of Moana‘s success.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours and determined that the filmmakers did not have access to Woodall’s work while developing Moana. Moana directors John Musker and Ron Clements, who also made The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Princess And The Frog, “had no idea about Bucky. They had never seen it, never heard of it,” Disney lawyer Moez Kaba said. There are similarities between the stories, which both feature teens hitting the seas and meeting Polynesian demigods and shape-shifting animals. Disney argued that those were “staples” of Polynesian lore and literature and, therefore, not copyrightable.

“Bucky is white; Moana is Oceanian. Bucky is from the mainland U.S.; Moana is indigenous to the fictional island of Motunui,” Disney argued in a motion [per Variety]. “Bucky lives in the modern day; Moana lives millennia in the past. Bucky is an ordinary teen; Moana is the future chief of her people. Bucky wants to learn to surf, while Moana wants to continue her people’s proud history as the greatest ocean voyagers the world has ever known.”

Woodall’s previous attempts to sue Disney were thrown out in 2022 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The release of Moana 2 opened the door to another try. Still, the worst favor Marchick ever did for a distant relative isn’t over yet. Woodall also filed suit against Disney, claiming Moana 2 infringed on his screenplay.

[via AP]

 
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