'Moana' has her origins questioned at trial where man says his surfer boy led to the Disney hit

This image released by Disney shows the character Moana, voiced by Auli'i Cravalho, in a scene from "Moana 2." (Disney via AP)

Was “Moana” based on a boy named Bucky?

Lawyers for a New Mexico writer and animator will say at closing arguments at his federal trial in Los Angeles on Monday that his work was stolen to create the Walt Disney Co.‘s 2016 hit about a questing Polynesian princess, whose sequel was among the biggest hits of last year.

Buck Woodall wrote a script, whose various titles have included “Bucky the Surfer Boy,” about a teenager vacationing in Hawaii with his parents who befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and goes on a quest that involves time travel to the ancient islands and interactions with demigods to save a sacred part of the islands from a developer.

Woodall said he first gave the script to a distant relative by marriage who worked for another company on the Disney lot in about 2004, and a dozen years later was stunned when he saw so many of his ideas in “Moana.”

Here are some of the many similarities his lawsuit alleges:

Both “tell the story about a teenager who defies parental warnings and embarks on a dangerous voyage across Polynesian waters to save the endangered land of a Polynesian island.”

Both “involve a main character who encounters a demigod with a giant hook and tattoos.”

Both “involve protagonists who learn about ancient Polynesian culture during a sea voyage” and “a recurring theme of the Polynesian belief in spiritual ancestors” who “manifested as animals which guide and guard the living.”

Defence lawyers and witnesses — including the woman Woodall gave the script to — said no one at Disney saw his work, and that “Moana” was developed through the same cultural research and internal collaboration as its other films.

A judge ruled that Woodall filed the 2020 lawsuit too late to have a claim on the nearly US$700 million global box office of “Moana.” What remains are the film’s DVD and Blu-ray sales — worth $31.4 million gross with a net profit of $10.4 million. The only remaining defendant is Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

“Moana” was co-directed, along with two others, by John Musker and Ron Clements, a duo that was essential to the 1990s Disney animation renaissance that made the company a global powerhouse.

At times with other collaborators, Musker and Clements co-wrote and co-directed 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” 1992’s “Aladdin,” 1997’s “Hercules” and 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog.”

Musker testified that they had never plagiarized, and he was angered by the accusation.

The relatively young jury of six women and two men watched “Moana” in its entirety while sitting in the courtroom and were also shown scenes from “The Little Mermaid” and other Musker and Clements films.

Musker testified that Moana’s relationship with her chief father was much like the mermaid Ariel’s with her father, King Triton.

A defence expert said that the relationship between Moana and the shapeshifting demigod Maui, voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, reflects Aladdin and his shapeshifting Genie, voiced by Robin Williams.

“So many of the extrinsic elements of ‘Moana’ have been in previous Musker and Clements films, indeed in Disney films going back a century,” the expert, Jeffrey Rovin testified at trial.

Woodall’s attorneys must prove the works had substantial similarity and that the defendants had access to the copyrighted work.

Both judge and jury will decide on substantial similarity, with the judge using the so-called “extrinsic test” of comparing individual elements and the jury using the “intrinsic test” of the “total concept and feel” of the two works.

Woodall in January filed a second lawsuit over “Moana 2,” which was an even bigger hit that brought in more than $1 billion globally. But the judge declined to combine the lawsuits, and the newer one, seeking as much as $10 billion, will be dealt with separately.

Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press