Was Moana A Copy? Disney Faces $10 Billion Lawsuit From Animator

Animator Buck Woodall is suing Disney for $10 billion, or 2.5 per cent of Moana's gross revenue.

13 Jan 2025, 05:45 · www.ndtv.com

Disney has been sued by animator Buck Woodall for allegedly copying the idea for the animated movie Moana and its sequel, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter. As per the lawsuit filed in the California federal court last week, Disney copied elements of a screenplay Mr Woodall wrote for an animated film called Bucky which has similar themes of teenagers from an ancient Polynesian village embarking on adventures to save their homes.

Mr Woodall is suing Disney for $10 billion, or 2.5 per cent of Moana's gross revenue. He claims he provided the screenplay and trailer of his movie to former Mandeville Films director of development Jenny Marchick who is now DreamWorks Animation's head of development for features.

"Disney's Moana was produced in the wake of Woodall's delivery to the Defendants of virtually all constituent parts necessary for its development and production after more than 17 years of inspiration and work on his animated film project," read the complaint.

"Moana and her crew are sucked into a perilous whirlpool-like oceanic portal, another dramatic and unique device-imagery found in Plaintiffs materials that could not possibly have been developed by chance or without malicious intentions," it added.

Mr Woodall had filed a similar lawsuit over the first Moana film but a court ruling in November last year relieved Disney, stating that the complainant had waited too long to file the suit. However, the release of the sequel granted him the ability to take legal action again.

Disney is yet to comment on the new lawsuit but during the previous hearing, it claimed that no one involved in the creation of Moana saw Mr Woodall's materials.

"Moana was not inspired by or based in any way on [Woodall] or his ‘Bucky' project, which I learned of for the first time after this lawsuit was filed,” director Ron Clements wrote in a declaration to the court at the time.

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Moana 2 release

Moana 2 released last year and is the direct sequel to the 2016 smash hit, following the life of Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) as she gathers crew for a new adventure, alongside Maui, played by Dwayne Johnson. The movie managed to rake in $964 million which made it the fourth-highest-grossing movie of 2024.

The movie's success is not limited to the box office with many believing it to be the leading contender in the Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song categories at various ceremonies during the 2024-2025 awards season.

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