‘Moana’ director scoffs at plagiarism claims at copyright infringement trial

LOS ANGELES (CN) — John Musker, who has written and directed some of Walt Disney Co.'s most successful animated movies, on Monday rejected the idea that he and longtime collaborator Ron Clements had plagiarized a story about the mythological adventures of a teenage Polynesian surfer to create "Moana."

"We have never plagiarized," Musker told a jury in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. "These kind of accusations make me mad."

Disney called Musker to testify in the copyright infringement trial brought by Buck Woodall, an animator who claims that the 2016 "Moana" blockbuster is based on the "Bucky" story that he shared around 2004 with his brother's sister-in-law, who worked at the time as an assistant for Mandeville Films on the Disney studio lot in Burbank, California.

Under questioning by Disney's attorney Moez Kaba, Musker told the jurors that he had never heard of Woodall and his "Bucky" story before he and Clements created "Moana." He also denied the suggestion made by Woodall's expert witness last week that he and Clements had changed the character of Moana from a surfing teenage boy to a sailing teenage girl to "cover their tracks."

Instead, according to Musker, the story of "Moana" involves very similar elements as other animated Disney features that he and Clements created, including "The Little Mermaid" in 1989, "Aladdin" in 1992, and "Hercules" in 1997, in which a headstrong teenage protagonist through a series of adventures and challenges discovers an important truth about themself and makes the world right again.

The jurors were shown scenes from these other Disney movies to underscore the point that the themes Woodall claims were surreptitiously stolen from his materials can be found in Musker and Clements's animated features that predate the "Bucky" materials.

For example, in a scene from "The Little Mermaid" played for the jury, King Triton berates his daughter Ariel about traveling to the ocean's surface — much like how in "Moana," her father angrily forbids her to sail beyond the island's reef.

Musker explained how and he Clements research fairytales, mythology and folklore from different cultures for stories that deal with essential human topics, frequently about how a child become an adult through a rite of passage. Those stories form what he called a launchpad for their movies.

"We like active heroes that pursue something," he testified. "They tend to be headstrong and take action. That creates drama."

Earlier Monday, Jenny Marchick, whom Woodall claims he shared the story with 20 years ago, testified that she was "100% certain" that she never passed on any of the "Bucky" materials Woodall shared with her to anyone involved in creation of "Moana" or to any other creative executives at Disney.

Marchick, nowadays head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, recounted how she was an assistant at Mandeville Films at the time and had agreed to meet with Woodall as a favor to her stepsister and her stepsister's husband, Woodall's brother.

According to Marchick, she made a call to Disney's feature animation studio for Woodall to find out whether they look at outside pitches and was told that they didn't. She also arranged for Woodall to meet with an assistant at Disney TV animation.

"I didn't work in animation, and I didn't know anything about animation," Marchick said referring to her time at Mandeville Films, a production company that develops live-action movies and which at the time had a first-look distribution deal with Disney.

"I thought Mr. Woodall would enjoy meeting someone to talk about animation," she said under cross-examination by Gustavo Lage, one of Woodall's attorneys.

Marchick testified she agreed again to look at Woodall's full-length script for "Bucky" sometime in 2012, when she was working as a creative executive at Sony Pictures, again as a favor to her sister and her sister's husband, but that she saw no merit in it and didn't discuss it with anyone at Disney.

Woodall, a New Mexico native who lived for decade in Hawaii, created the story of Bucky, a blond 13-year-old who lives on Kauai. In the story, Bucky gets mistakenly transported back in time with his new group of surfing friends and has to figure out a riddle he’s told by Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, to get back to the present and save a sacred piece of Hawaiian land from being destroyed.

Last week, Woodall testified how he was in shock the first time he saw "Moana" in late 2016.

Maui, the Polynesian shape-shifting demigod who is one of the main characters in "Moana," strongly resembled Kamapua'a, the Hawaiian shape-shifting half man-half hog demigod who features prominently in his "Bucky" script, Woodall claimed. Likewise, he said, Moana's parents and grandmother were very much like characters that he created for "Bucky."

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