Buck Woodall’s five-year legal battle alleging copyright infringement against Disney’s Moana has come to an end—for now. Woodall filed a lawsuit against the production, claiming that the animated film franchise copied essential elements from his screenplay, Bucky the Surfer Boy.
As of March 10, a Los Angeles jury found that Disney was not guilty of stealing Woodall’s story about the adventures of a young surfer in Hawaii.
The California federal jury deliberated for less than 3 hours before coming to a decision that the creators of “Moana” did not infringe on the plaintiff’s copyright, as employees state that they never had any reach to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outline and scripts for what he created titled “Bucky the Surfer Boy.”
In light of this, Woodall mentioned that he shared his work, prior to the development of the movie, with a distant relative who also worked within the Disney company lot, namely, Mandeville Films. The woman later testified, however, that she never showed his project to anyone as she appeared in the two-week trial.
The jury that contained six women and two men additionally found that there was no need to consider the claimed “similarities” between the character “Bucky” and the Polynesian princess, “Moana.” Both the original and its sequel follow the story of teenagers who defy their parents by taking adventures on dangerous treks to save their homes, while encountering spirits manifested in animals in their journey.
That said, this was the very similarity in which the plaintiff raises with the main characters of Moana and Bucky. In addition, the plot also features the protagonist’s journey with an animal companion, a symbolic necklace to be found, and an encounter with a demigod who makes an alliance with them to confront a giant creature to restore peace.
Woodall bought $10 billion in damages and seeks 2.5 percent of the film’s gross revenue. No trial date has been set for the Moana 2 copyright infringement case, but what is known is that the lawsuit requests “for an accounting of all revenues of any kind generated by the Defendants from each portion of the Moana franchise.”
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