Buck Woodall is initiating legal action against The Walt Disney Company, seeking compensation after he alleges that the renowned House of Mouse appropriated his creative ideas for the beloved animated film Moana. Woodall claims that his intellectual contributions were misused, leading to the production of the movie without proper acknowledgment or compensation for his original concepts.
At the start of the current year, The Walt Disney Company found itself embroiled in a significant lawsuit initiated by animator Buck Woodall. He claimed that the Moana films heavily borrowed from his original screenplay and artistic concepts, asserting that he had been misled by another studio into disclosing these valuable ideas. Woodall’s lawsuit sought an astonishing $10 billion in damages, highlighting the magnitude of his claims and the seriousness with which he approached this legal battle.
Recent updates from The Hollywood Reporter reveal that Disney has successfully defended itself in the copyright infringement case brought forth by Woodall. The animator had previously proposed a project titled Bucky and the Surfer Boy, which he believed was unjustly appropriated for the Moana series. According to The Associated Press, after a brief deliberation of just over two hours, the jury concluded that Disney had not utilized Woodall’s concepts, determining that “none of its employees ever saw works related to his screenplay,” effectively dismissing his claims.
The jury’s decision hinged on the defense’s argument that Disney had no access to Woodall’s materials, contrary to his assertions. Notably, Woodall had lodged his complaint solely with Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment, which distributes DVDs and Blu-rays of the original 2016 Moana film. This timing was significant, as it came just before the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations for copyright infringement lawsuits. Furthermore, much of Woodall’s filing was centered around Moana 2, which premiered last November. It’s important to mention that Woodall had never produced his intended film, titled Bucky.
In his lawsuit, Woodall alleged that Jenny Marchick, a former development director at Mandeville Films—a studio that collaborated with Disney on projects such as the 2017 live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers—transmitted crucial materials, including scripts and artistic illustrations, to Disney. The 33-page legal filing claimed that [Disney and Marchick] “participated in a fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation, and extensive exploitation of Woodall’s copyrighted materials, intellectual property, and trade secrets as set forth in this Complaint. This conspiracy was marked by a web of coordinated actions, including but not limited to: deliberate misrepresentations to deceive Woodall; systematic concealment of critical evidence; covert meetings to plan their infringing activities; and the distribution of stolen materials across various platforms…”
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