Disney’s animated film chronicling adventures in far seas finds itself in legal waters. As per The Hollywood Reporter, Animator Buck Woodall has filed a lawsuit against Disney. He is accusing the company of plagiarising the concept for ‘Moana’ and its sequel title. Woodall filed lawsuit in a California federal court, last week. It claims that Disney took elements from a screenplay Woodall wrote for an animated project titled ‘Bucky.’ The complaint alleges that both works share themes of teenagers from an ancient Polynesian village embarking on adventures to save their homes. Notably, this is not Woodall’s first legal action against Disney. Previously, the court dismissed a lawsuit over the first ‘Moana’ film in November last year due to the statute of limitations. However, the 2024 film, ‘Moana 2’ allowed Woodall to file a new complaint.

Buck Woodall is seeking $10 billion in damages or 2.5 per cent of ‘Moana’s gross revenue. The animator claims to have shared the screenplay and a trailer for ‘Bucky’ with Jenny Marchick. At that time, Jenny was the director of development at Mandeville Films. Now, Jenny is the head of development for features at DreamWorks Animation. His complaint adds, “Disney’s Moana was produced in the wake of Woodall’s delivery to the Defendants of virtually all constituent parts necessary for its development and production after more than 17 years of inspiration and work on his animated film project.”

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Moreover, the suite adds, “Moana and her crew are sucked into a perilous whirlpool-like oceanic portal, another dramatic and unique device-imagery found in plaintiffs materials that could not possibly have been developed by chance or without malicious intentions.”

As of now, Disney has responded to the latest lawsuit. Meanwhile, in the earlier case, Disney denied the allegations. The banner iterated that none of the creators involved in ‘Moana’ were aware of Woodall’s materials. Director Ron Clements stated, “Moana was not inspired by or based in any way on [Woodall] or his ‘Bucky’ project, which I learned of for the first time after this lawsuit was filed.”

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‘Moana 2’ premiered last year as a direct sequel to the 2016 blockbuster. The sequel follows Moana and Maui’s new adventure. The sequel film racked up $964 million at the global box office, emerging as the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2024. Additionally, the title is a strong contender for major awards this season. These include the Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song categories.