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A jury on Monday quickly and completely rejected a man’s claim that Disney’s Moana was stolen from his story of a young surfer in Hawaii.The Los Angeles federal jury deliberated for only about 2 hours before deciding that the creators of Moana never had access to writer and animator Buck Woodall’s outlines and script for Bucky the Surfer Boy.With that question settled, the jury of six women and two men didn’t even have to consider the similarities between Bucky and Disney’s 2016 hit animated film about a questing Polynesian princess.Woodall had shared his work with a distant relative, who worked for a different company on the Disney lot, but the woman testified during the two-week trial that she never showed it to anyone at Disney.“Obviously we’re disappointed,” Woodall’s attorney Gustavo Lage said outside court. “We’re going to review our options and think about the best path forward.”In closing arguments earlier Monday, Woodall’s attorney said that a long chain of circumstantial evidence showed the two works were inseparable.“There was no Moana without Bucky,” Lage said.Defense lawyer Moez Kaba said that the evidence showed overwhelmingly that Moana was clearly the creation and “crowning achievement” of the 40-year career of John Musker and Ron Clements, the writers and directors behind 1989’s The Little Mermaid, 1992’s Aladdin, 1997’s Hercules, and 2009’s The Princess and the Frog.“They had no idea about Bucky,” Kaba said in his closing. “They had never seen it, never heard of it.”Moana earned nearly $700 million at the global box office.A judge previously ruled that Woodall’s 2020 lawsuit came too late for him to claim a piece of those receipts, and that a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over Moana 2which earned more than $1 billionmust be decided separately. That suit remains active, though the jury’s decision does not bode well for it. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall, who is also overseeing the sequel lawsuit, said after the verdict that she agreed with the jurors’ decision about access.“We are incredibly proud of the collective work that went into the making of Moana and are pleased that the jury found it had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s works,” Disney said in a statement.Musker and Disney’s attorneys declined to comment outside the courtroom.The relatively young jury of six women and two men watched Moana in its entirety in the courtroom. They considered a story outline that Woodall created for Bucky in 2003, along with a 2008 update and a 2011 script.In the latter versions of the story, the title character, vacationing in Hawaii with his parents, befriends a group of Native Hawaiian youth and goes on a quest that includes time travel to the ancient islands and interactions with demigods to save a sacred site from a developer.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 located on the Disney lot. He sent her follow-up materials through the years. He testified that he was stunned when he saw Moana in 2016 and saw so many of his ideas.Along with her testimony saying she didn’t show Bucky to anyone, messages shared by the defense showed she eventually ignored Woodall’s queries to her and had told him there was nothing she could do for him.Disney attorney Kaba argued there was no evidence Marchick ever worked on Moana or received any credit or compensation for it.Kaba pointed out that Marchick, now head of features development at DreamWorks Animation, worked for key Disney competitors Sony and Fox during much of the time she was allegedly making use of Woodall’s work for Disney.Woodall also submitted the script directly to Disney and had a meeting with an assistant at the Disney Channel, which Marchick arranged for him, to talk about working as an animator. But jurors agreed that this didn’t give them reason to believe that Bucky made its way to Musker, Clements or their collaborators.Lage, Woodall’s attorney, outlined some of the similarities of the two works in his closing.Both include teens on oceanic quests.Both have Polynesian demigods as central figures and shape-shifting characters who turn into, among other things, insects, and sharks.In both, the main characters interact with animals who act as spirit helpers.Kaba said many of these elements, including Polynesian lore and basic “staples of literature,” are not copyrightable.Shape-shifting among supernatural characters, he said, appears throughout films including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules, which made Musker and Clements essential to the Disney renaissance of the 1990s and made Disney a global powerhouse.Animal guides go back to movies as early as 1940’s Pinocchio and appear in all of Musker and Clements’ previous films, he said.Kaba said Musker and Clements developed Moana the same way they did the other films, through their own inspiration, research, travel and creativity.The lawyer said thousands of pages of development documents showed every step of Musker and Clements’ creation, whose spark came from the paintings of Paul Gaugin and the writings of Herman Melville“You can see every single fingerprint,” Kaba said. “You can see the entire genetic makeup of Moana.” Andrew Dalton, AP Entertainment Writer
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Old 401(k)s are a little like the old clothes in the back of your closet. You know you should do something about them, but there they sit, mostly out of sight and mind.And so it is with your old 401(k). If deciding what to do with an old (k) plan has been on your to-do list for a while, here are the key steps you should take to get it done. Step 1: Check your account value. If your balance in your former employer’s 401(k) plan is over $7,000, you can leave the money behind in the old plan or roll the assets into an IRA or your new employer’s 401(k).But if your balance falls below that $7,000 threshold, some of the decision-making may be out of your hands. Step 2: Determine whether to stay within the 401(k) confines. Assuming your balance is over $7,000, your next task is to decide whether to roll the money into an IRA or keep it inside a 401(k).I often recommend rolling over the assets from a former 401(k) into a no-fee IRA with a top-notch mutual fund company or discount broker. But some people value the extra creditor protections that can accompany 401(k) assets versus IRA assets, while others may prize 401(k)-specific investment options. Step 3: Assess the quality of your 401(k) options. If you think you will be better off leaving your money inside a 401(k) rather than rolling it over to an IRA, the next job is to conduct some research on your own 401(k) options.Even if you do decide to stay with a 401(k), you may need to decide whether you’re better off staying put in your former employer’s plan or that of your new employer. Step 4: Find the right IRA provider. If a rollover to an IRA is the way to go, the next step is to identify the right brokerage firm or mutual fund company. Look for a firm that offers a breadth of high-quality investment options with no additional layers of fees for IRA investors. Target-date funds are an elegant, low-maintenance, and underutilized option. Step 5: Decide whether to convert your traditional 401(k) assets to Roth. If you decide to roll Roth 401(k) contributions to an IRA or your current employer’s 401(k), your new account will be Roth, too, meaning that you won’t owe tax on qualified withdrawals.If you have traditional 401(k) assets, a rollover is also a good time to consider whether to convert those assets to a Roth account at the same time. Step 6: Execute. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets to an IRA, fill out the paperwork or online form to open the IRA. You’ll then request a direct rollover from your 401(k) plan to the new IRA provider.The process may be a bit more cumbersome if you’re rolling over to your current employer’s 401(k).In both cases, make sure your 401(k) provider makes the check payable to the provider and sends it directly to them, rather than to you. If the check is made out to you, 20% of the balance will be withheld for income tax. You’ll then have 60 days to get that money deposited into an IRA or another 401(k); if that deadline comes and goes, the distribution will count as a withdrawal and you’ll owe ordinary income tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re not 55 or older. Step 7: Determine what to invest in. If you’ve decided to roll over your assets from an old 401(k) to another 401(k) or IRA, you’ll also have to determine how you’ll allocate those assets.If all of your retirement assets were in your old 401(k), a sturdy target-date fund is a one-stop, low-maintenance choice that you can hold into retirement. If your old 401(k) is just one of several accounts geared toward retirement, a rollover can be an ideal time to check up on how all the pieces fit togetherand where you have holes. This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance Christine Benz of Morningstar
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Back in January, State Farm announced that it was canceling its plans to run a Super Bowl commercial due to the impact of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. Our focus is firmly on providing support to the people of Los Angeles, the company said in a statement at the time. But now the company is taking its Super Bowl work and bringing it to another pillar of its advertising calendar, March Madness. The spot stars Jason Bateman as . . . Bateman, a less-than-adequate substitute for Batman. Created by agency HighDive, the spot also has Grammy-winning artist SZA, popular streamer Kai Cenat, and content creator Jordan Howlett (aka Jordan the Stallion). Last week, Cenat made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to tease the spot. State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook says March Madness is a huge part of the culture, and a perfect time to use humor to get an important point across. I think today, more than ever, it may seem like insurance companies are all the same, but when it comes to coverage, having insurance is not the same as having State Farm, says Cook. Over the past few years, State Farm has dominated headlines for dropping insurance policies in the areas hit hardest by the fires, due to the risk of extreme weather. It wasnt the only insurance company to do so, but State Farm was hit hardest by the backlash. Now, the brand is putting on a full-court press as a strong sports marketer to counter the criticism. Our consistent investment in sports is all about aligning [with] our business strategy, and that’s about how we reach large, engaged audiences, says Cook. We want to create that emotional connection with fans. And so you see us doing that, whether it’s in our sponsorships or the creative that we deliver. Cook says that its important for the brand to ask people to really compare its record and services to other options. Our category is very competitive, says Cook. It’s important for us to highlight the difference, and the timing couldn’t be better from a business standpoint. If it feels bold, it was meant to be. Because we feel it was important for people to understand the core message of the campaign.
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