‘Frozen’ Copyright Lawsuit Settled By Disney
The sealed-up-tight confidential settlement stops a planned October trial over the $1.2 billion 2013 blockbuster. Wilson filed her lawsuit in March of that year claiming that there were distinct similarities between her short film The Snowman and a trailer for the Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck- directed pic. Looking at the carrot-nosed snowman of both flicks and various narrative devices, the federal judge agreed. “The sequence of events in both works, from start to finish, is too parallel to conclude that no reasonable juror could find the works substantially similar,” wrote Judge Chhabria last July when he rejected the House of Mouse’s first attempt to have the suit dismissed. Taking a slightly different approach toward the festival screened and online short, Disney struck out again this April – which is probably the point at which the checkbook came out to make this all go away as they got ready to officially give the obvious thumbs-up to a Frozen sequel.
So, I hope the Disney marketing monkeys have learned something out of all this. I'm sure they were "inspired" by that poor woman's short, and ripping it off wasn't intentionally, but man... all this could have been avoided if they used scenes from the ACTUAL Frozen movie in the first teaser. No, this movie's main character isn't a snowman.
Or they could have also paid her to use her idea for the teaser from the start, and saved alot of wasted time and money.