Man Says Disney Stole His Work to Make Moana

UPDATE Mar 10, 2025 5:01 PM CDT

Was Moana based on a boy named Bucky? Lawyers for a New Mexico writer and animator will say at closing arguments at a federal trial in Los Angeles on Monday that his work was stolen to create the 2016 hit Disney hit about a 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, the AP reports.

Mar 10, 2025 1:42 PM CDT

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."

Defense 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.

Moana was co-directed, along with two others, by John Musker and Ron Clements. 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. A defense expert said that the relationship between Moana and the shapeshifting demigod Maui reflects Aladdin and his shapeshifting Genie. "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.

(More Moana stories.)