Animator Buck Woodall has filed a lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company and their respective film, TV and animation departments as well as DreamWorks Animation’s head of development for feature films Jenny Marchick that alleges that Marchick and Disney stole elements of a screenplay he wrote for a Polynesian-inspired animated film titled ‘Bucky’ that was used for the iconic ‘Moana’ franchise of films.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Woodall seeks damages “in the sum of at least $10 billion.”
Woodall alleges that he brought the idea for his screenplay Bucky to Marchick and then-employer Mandeville Films back in 2003 and claims that Mandeville had a first look deal with Disney, held offices at Disney properties in California, and later shared Woodall’s copyrighted materials for the project with Disney, which ultimately became Moana.
The lawsuit says that both Bucky and Moana follow “a teenager who defies parental warnings and embarks on a dangerous voyage.” and that both films utilize ancient Polynesian villages as a backdrop and incorporate the Polynesian belief in spiritual ancestors, using the stars to navigate the sea, and a demigod who wields a giant hook and covered in tattoos, among a number of other similarities.
Woodall says, via the lawsuit, that he sent Marchick a copy of his final draft script back in 2011 while Marchick was working as a “consultant, original movies” at Disney, which the complaint describes as “virtually the final cog in the Defendants’ conspiratorial machinery of stealing Bucky and developing Moana.”
Woodall claims he “has suffered substantial damages, including lost opportunities for financial gain, diminished value of his intellectual property, and profound reputational harm as a result of Defendants’ actions” and also says that the most recent film ‘Moana 2’ further uses elements in Bucky.
Woodall also seeks at least 2.5 percent “of the gross revenues appertaining or relating to Moana in the sum of at least $5 billion” and requests “for an accounting of all revenues of any kind generated by the Defendants from each portion of the Moana franchise” following the release of the original movie back in 2016.
