Jury Rules Disney Did Not Plagiarize ‘Moana’ from Male Surfer’s Tale

LOS ANGELES—On Monday, a jury promptly dismissed a man’s assertion that Disney’s “Moana” was derived from his story about a young surfer in Hawaii.

The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for roughly 2 ½ hours before concluding that the creators of “Moana” had never accessed writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for “Bucky the Surfer Boy.”

With this question resolved, the jury, composed of six women and two men, did not need to evaluate the similarities between “Bucky” and Disney’s 2016 animated film about a Polynesian princess on a journey.

Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative who was employed at a different company within the Disney lot. However, she testified during the two-week trial that she never presented it to anyone at Disney.

“Naturally, we’re disappointed,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage remarked outside the courtroom. “We’ll review our options and consider the best course of action moving forward.”

During closing arguments that day, Woodall’s attorney argued that a long chain of circumstantial evidence connected the two works.

“There was no ‘Moana’ without ‘Bucky,’” Lage asserted.

Defense attorney Moez Kaba countered that the evidence clearly indicated that “Moana” was the result of the esteemed 40-year careers of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors responsible for classics such as 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” 1992’s “Aladdin,” 1997’s “Hercules,” and 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog.”

“They were entirely unaware of Bucky,” Kaba stated during his closing remarks. “They had no knowledge of it, had never seen it.”

“Moana” grossed nearly $700 million worldwide.

A judge had previously determined that Woodall’s lawsuit from 2020 was too late for him to claim any profits from “Moana,” and that another lawsuit he filed this year regarding “Moana 2,” which accrued over $1 billion, must be resolved in a separate case. That lawsuit remains ongoing, although the jury’s verdict does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also presiding over the sequel case, indicated after the verdict that she concurred with the jury regarding access.

“We take great pride in the collaborative effort that went into creating Moana and are glad the jury concluded it was unrelated to Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement.

Musker and Disney’s lawyers opted not to provide comments outside the courtroom.

The relatively young jury, comprised of six women and two men, watched the entire “Moana” film in the courtroom. They also reviewed a story outline created by Woodall for “Bucky” in 2003, as well as an updated version from 2008 and a script from 2011.

In the later iterations of the story, the main character, on vacation in Hawaii with his parents, befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and embarks on a quest filled with time travel to ancient islands and encounters with demigods to preserve a sacred site from a developer.

Around 2004, Woodall shared the “Bucky” outline with the stepsister of his brother’s wife. This woman, Jenny Marchick, worked for Mandeville Films, a company that had a contract with Disney and was situated on the Disney lot. He communicated follow-up materials to her over the years and testified to being shocked when he saw “Moana” in 2016, noting many similarities to his own ideas.

Despite her assertion that she did not show “Bucky” to anyone, communications produced by the defense indicated she eventually ignored Woodall’s inquiries and informed him she couldn’t assist him.

Disney attorney Kaba contended there was no evidence that Marchick ever worked on “Moana” or received any credit or compensation for it.

Kaba emphasized that Marchick, now head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, was employed by significant Disney competitors, Sony and Fox, for much of the period she was supposedly utilizing Woodall’s work for Disney.

Woodall also directly submitted his script to Disney and met with an assistant from the Disney Channel, an appointment arranged by Marchick, to discuss potential animator roles. However, jurors concluded that this did not provide sufficient justification to believe that “Bucky” had reached Musker, Clements, or their associates.

Lage, Woodall’s attorney, delineated some of the resemblances between the two works during his closing statements.

Both stories involve teens on oceanic quests.

Both feature Polynesian demigods and shape-shifting characters transforming into various creatures, including insects and sharks.

In both narratives, the protagonists engage with animals that serve as spirit guides.

Kaba argued that many of these components, including Polynesian mythology and fundamental “staples of literature,” are not subject to copyright protection.

Shape-shifting among supernatural beings, he noted, is a recurring theme in films like “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and “Hercules,” which contributed to Musker and Clements’ notable impact on Disney during the 1990s and solidified Disney’s status as a global giant.

Animal companions have appeared in films as early as 1940’s “Pinocchio” and are present in all of Musker and Clements’ past works, he asserted.

Kaba concluded that Musker and Clements developed “Moana” in the same manner as they did their previous films, through their own inspiration, research, travels, and creativity.

The attorney indicated that thousands of pages of development records demonstrated each phase of Musker and Clements’ creative process, stemming from the artwork of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville.

“You can discern every single fingerprint,” Kaba stated. “You can see the complete genetic makeup of ‘Moana.’”

By Andrew Dalton