Buck Woodall’s five-year battle with Disney over who really created Moana looks to have come to an end, with a Los Angeles jury on Monday finding for the House of Mouse in the animated franchise dispute, at least for now.
While the panel of six women and two men determined in just under three hours that Disney and primary Moana creators John Musker and Ron Clements never saw or even knew about Woodall’s Bucky the Surfer Boy work while working on the 2016 animated hit, Woodall now has a separate copyright infringement action in the courts over blockbuster sequel Moana 2.
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Right now, after a slew of internal communications and more sausage-making was revealed in documents for this trial, Disney is taking the win and leaving it at that.
“We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” a spokesperson for the Bob Iger-run media giant told Deadline after the verdict was read out this afternoon in Judge Alka Sagar’s courtroom at the Roybal Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Los Angeles.
Lawyers for Woodall were not so upbeat, obviously.
“We are obviously disappointed in the verdict,” attorney Gustavo D. Lage said Monday. “At the present time, we are weighing our options to determine the best path forward regarding the legal remedies available to our client.”
With the question of whether Musker or Clements or any other principal had ever come in contact with Woodall’s Bucky materials the primary question before the jury, any issue of similarity between the Hawaii setting and Polynesian demigods in Bucky and Moana was moot. “They had no idea about Bucky,” Disney outside counsel Moez Kaba said of the Little Mermaid and Aladdin filmmakers in his closing argument Monday in the downtown L.A. courthouse. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.”
Like in the first case, which was filed in 2020 and still may be appealed, I’m told, Woodall claims in the newer case that a distant relative helped him out. To that, beginning in 2004 Woodall says he handed Jenny Marchick his copyright-protected Bucky the Surfer Boy trailer storyboards, “intellectual property and trade secrets” (including a 2011 finished script).
Marchich was then Mandeville Films’ director of development and working out of the Mandeville offices on the Disney lot.
As was made clear in Disney documents unearthed in discovery and in the trial, work began on the Herman Melville-inspired Moana in 2011, a point Woodall’s lawyers jumped on. Unburdened now of the time limitations placed on his initial Moana suit of 2020, the January-filed Moana 2 suit is seeking $10 billion from Disney, or around 2.5% of the gross from the 2024 sensation, which grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office.
In the end, because of statutes, Woodall wouldn’t have been able to see any cash from the first Moana, but he may have a Hail Mary at some dough from the second toon, which returned Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson to their starring roles.
“This case arises from a two-decade-long scheme masterminded by Marchick but ultimately joined in with malice and for profit by all Defendants pursuant to the aforementioned conspiracy described in this Complaint,” reads the complaint filed January 10, 2025 and seeking injunction relief and big bucks. “The scheme started out as a plan by Marchick to support her thirst to gain success in her desired career in the movie industry, at all costs, by working with the Defendants to steal all the components of Plaintiffs Copyrighted Materials, as that term is defined in this Complaint.”
“This theft resulted in what would eventually become one of the most unique and profitable animated film franchises in motion picture history revolving around Plaintiffs Copyrighted Materials and directly resulting in the Disney franchise known as Moana,” the lawsuit adds.
For the record, Marchick was the sister-in-law of Woodall’s brother. Professionally, after time at Fox and Sony, Marchick now holds the position of head of development for features at NBCUniversal-owned DreamWorks Animation.
In Marchick’s long-ish stint testifying in the nearly two-long case, the exec stated that she had no memory of ever showing any of Woodall’s Bucky the Surfer Boy material to anyone at Disney over the years even as her relative by marriage sent her material and updates. Correspondence brought up at trial also showed Marchick telling Woodall via email that she didn’t think she could help him. Marchick did eventually secure Woodall a job interview with a Disney Channel staffer for an animating gig, but that didn’t seem to result in much.
No trial date has been set for the Moana 2 copyright infringement case, However, watch that docket, because you can be sure Disney will be asking Judge Consuelo B. Marshall to toss out the whole thing sooner rather than later based on today’s outcome.