Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer
A jury in California has found that the Disney movie Moana did not steal its idea from animator Buck Woodall. Woodall’s decades-old screenplay about a young Hawaiian surfer. The screenplay was the center of a lawsuit against Disney alleging that Disney had stolen the idea for the plot from his story. The jury decided on Monday after deliberating for over two hours that no Disney employee had access to Woodall’s storyboards or script, which Woodall had claimed was shared with an executive at Disney in the early 2000s.
Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said, “We are disappointed. We are going to review our options and think about the best path forward,” after the jury read out their verdict. A spokesperson from Disney said they were, “incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana” and “pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with plaintiff’s works”.
Woodall filed a lawsuit in 2020 claiming that Disney had used many of the elements of his screenplay for Bucky, alleging that there was a “fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation and extensive exploitation” of his copyrighted materials by former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick. Marchick is Woddall’s step-sister-in-law. His lawsuit alleges that he gave Marchick access to a screenplay and trailer for Bucky in 2003 and gave her “extremely large quantities of intellectual property and trade secrets” after the director had convinced him she would get the film greenlit.
