Jury in ‘Moana’ copyright trial gets primer on Polynesian, Hawaiian culture on day 1

An anthropologist testified at the copyright infringement trial about the similarities between "Moana" and "Bucky" that aren't found in traditional Polynesian stories.

by Edvard Pettersson, Court House News,  February 26, 2025

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The jury tasked with deciding whether Walt Disney's 2016 blockbuster movie "Moana" infringed the work of an animator who created a story about a teenage surfer years earlier received a lesson on Polynesian and Hawaiian culture Wednesday on the first day of witness testimony.

Terry Hunt, an anthropologist who specializes in Polynesian archeology, was called by Buck Woodall to explain to the jurors in downtown Los Angeles how both Woodall's "Bucky" and "Moana" included similar—and supposedly not coincidental—departures from traditional Polynesian and Hawaiian mythology.

Both "Bucky," the story of a teenage boy from New Mexico who moves to Hawaii after his father's death, and "Moana," the tale of the daughter of a local chief set in ancient Polynesia, are essentially modern, western stories about willful teenagers defying their elders to set out on their own to save their communities. This is not a theme in Polynesian tradition, Hunt testified.

"It's unusual to have an individual acting in such an isolated way," Hunt told the jury under questioning by Gustavo Lage, one of Woodall's lawyers. "Such an individualized approach is not very Polynesian."

Instead, traditional Polynesian narratives typically involve more communal endeavors, Hunt testified.

Likewise, elements Hunt said are found in both "Bucky" and "Moana," such as protective necklaces and whirlpool portals to travel through space and time, are not part of traditional Polynesian stories. Necklaces are used to communicate identity and status, Hunt said, not for protection.

In addition, Hunt testified, "Moana" incorporates many specifically Hawaiian elements that aren't found elsewhere in Polynesia but that are part of Woodall's "Bucky" script.

For one, "Moana" starts out on a fictional South Pacific island called Motunui. But according to Hunt, the setting strongly resembles "iconic" Hanalei Bay on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, with its curved river flowing into a crescent shaped bay surrounded by steep mountains, where Woodall lived for a decade and which is the setting for his "Bucky" script.

"The setting for 'Moana' doesn't exist anywhere else in Polynesia," he said.

In addition, Hunt testified, the volcanic demon Te Kâ in "Moana" is clearly based on Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes who is part of the "Bucky" story, and there is no similar deity elsewhere in Polynesian tradition.

Hunt's testimony is meant to boost Woodall's argument that the purported similarities between "Bucky" and "Moana" aren't coincidental but are evidence that Disney stole his story.

Woodall claims that Disney's animated feature was based on a treatment he sent in 2003 to Jenny Marchick, the stepsister of his brother's wife, who worked at Mandeville Films at the time. That movie production company was based on Disney's campus in Burbank, California, and had a first-look distribution agreement with the studio.

"Moana" was created by Ron Clements and John Musker, the same team that made Disney's "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," and "Hercules," among other animated features.

Like in their other movies, Clements and Musker in "Moana" employed a background from mythology or folklore to tell the story of a headstrong, teenage protagonist who sets out on journey to save their community.

"They had never heard of Buck Woodall or 'Bucky' until four years after 'Moana' was released," Robert Klieger, an attorney for Disney, told the jury earlier Wednesday in his opening statement.

According to Klieger, Woodall's stepsister-in-law quickly found out that Disney's animation studio doesn't look at unsolicited, outside pitches after he had given her his treatment for "Bucky" in 2003. When Woodall sent her a further developed treatment for "Bucky" in 2008, Klieger said, she no longer worked for Mandeville but for a Disney competitor and would have been fired if she forwarded his pitch to Disney.

This past November, U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall trimmed Woodall's copyright lawsuit, first filed in 2020, on summary judgment, agreeing with Disney that the statute of limitations barred most of his claims other than those against Buena Vista Home Entertainment, the Disney unit that distributes movies to the home video market.

Woodall filed a second lawsuit in January, bringing similar copyright infringement claims over "Moana 2," the sequel Disney released in 2024, and seeking $10 billion in damages from the entertainment behemoth. Marshall, however, rebuffed his attempt to combine the two cases and delay the trial.

The animator has unsuccessfully tried to get Disney's streaming business Disney+ into the trial. The judge on Monday again denied Woodall's request to let his damages expert testify about the revenue Disney+ receives from "Moana" because, she said, Disney+ is a separate entity from Buena Vista Home Entertainment, the only defendant left in the case.