{"id":28224,"date":"2025-01-12T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=28224"},"modified":"2025-01-13T23:20:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T04:20:46","slug":"woodall-sues-disney-claiming-moana-2-violated-his-copyright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=28224","title":{"rendered":"Woodall Sues Disney, Claiming ‘Moana 2’ Violated His Copyright"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

On Friday, January 10, animator Buck Woodall filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit<\/a> in a California federal court accusing Disney of stealing some of his ideas the studio used in its animated film Moana 2<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, a sequel to the original film that had been released in 2016. He is seeking $10 billion in damages. The sequel debuted to box-office receipts of $224.5 million, while the 2016 original earned more than $687 worldwide. It will likely be a candidate for an Academy Award nomination when they are announced next week.<\/p>\r\n

Woodall had earlier filed an identical lawsuit claiming the original Moana<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>had also violated his copyright, but it was dismissed in November on the grounds that the suit was filed too late. The release of Moana 2<\/strong><\/em> over the Christmas holidays allowed Woodall to sue again.\u00a0
Woodall\u2019s new lawsuit claims Disney illegally lifted elements from Bucky<\/strong><\/em>, a screenplay he had written earlier. He says that this screenplay, like the two Moana<\/strong> <\/em>animations, narrates the fate of teenagers in a Polynesian village who try to protect their community from malicious spirits manifesting themselves as animals.

Woodall claims that back in 2003, he had shown his screenplay and a trailer for Bucky<\/strong> <\/em>to Jenny Marchick<\/a>, who was then the director of development for Mandeville Films and now heads features development for DreamWorks Animation. His lawsuit claims that various elements in the Moana<\/strong> <\/em>films were lifted from Bucky<\/strong><\/em>, such as a symbolic necklace, a tattooed demigod, and a giant creature inside a mountain.<\/p>\r\n

<\/ins>\u00a0

The lawsuit also refers to the fact that \u201cMoana 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.\u201d It further claims that \u201cDisney\u2019s Moana<\/strong> <\/em>was produced in the wake of Woodall\u2019s 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.\u201d

In its defense, Disney quoted a statement from Moana<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s director Ron Clements<\/a> denying these allegations: \u201cMoana<\/strong> <\/em>was not inspired by or based in any way on [Woodall] or his \u2018Bucky<\/strong><\/em>\u2019 project, which I learned of for the first time after this lawsuit was filed.\u201d Disney also submitted evidence that documented the creative process it used in making Moana<\/strong><\/em>, such as story ideas, travel journals, scripts, and pitch materials.<\/p>\r\n

Check out other articles by Edward.<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/ins>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, January 10, animator Buck Woodall filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit in a California federal court accusing Disney of stealing some of his ideas the studio used in its animated film Moana 2, a sequel to the original film that had been released in 2016. He is seeking $10 billion in damages. The sequel debuted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[25699,25698,25700,55,1895,25702,15876,25697,25701],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWoodall Sues Disney, Claiming 'Moana 2' Violated His Copyright<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Moana 2 : Buck Woodall filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit in a California federal court accusing Disney of stealing some of his ideas.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=28224\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Woodall Sues Disney, Claiming 'Moana 2' Violated His Copyright\" \/>\n<meta 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