The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about 2 ½ hours before deciding that the creators of “Moana” never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for ...

After just 2.5 hours of deliberation, the jury ruled that the filmmakers never had access to Buck Woodall’s Bucky the Surfer Boy script.

The film that went on to earn nearly $700 million worldwide. However, Marchick stated during the trial that she never passed Woodall’s work along to Disney.

On Monday, March 10, multiple outlets reported that a federal jury in L.A. needed only two and a half hours of deliberation before it concluded that the creators behind Disney's 2016 animated hit ...

Around 2004, Woodall gave the “Bucky” outline to the stepsister of his brother's wife. That woman, Jenny Marchick, worked for Mandeville Films, a company that had a contract with Disney and was ...

A Los Angeles jury decided on March 10, 2025, that Disney did not steal the idea for its 2016 animated movie Moana. The decision came after a two-week trial where Buck Woodall, a writer and ...

A California jury found that Disney’s Moana did not steal its idea from animator Buck Woodall’s decades-old screenplay about a young Hawaiian surfer. After deliberating for over two hours on ...

Woodall, who lives in Mexico, first sued Disney for at least $100m in damages in 2020, but a California court ruled in November that his filing had come too late and dismissed it.

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 ...