Disney bosses want Zootopia copyright lawsuit dismissed

Disney bosses are fighting back amid allegations they stole the idea for hit animated film Zootopia from Total Recall screenwriter Gary Goldman.
Goldman filed suit in California federal court in March (17), accusing Disney officials of lifting character designs, themes, and even lines of dialogue from an idea he began working on in 2000.
He allegedly pitched the idea, which he titled Looney, to Disney executives in 2000 and again in 2009, and while they were interested, they ultimately passed on the project, only for key elements of his script to reportedly end up in the 2016 release.
A spokesman for Disney denied the claims at the time of the lawsuit filing, and now their attorney Daniel Petrocelli has asked the judge overseeing the dispute to throw the case out of court.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a motion for dismissal was filed on Monday (22May17) and in the documents, Petrocelli insists the suit is “just another example in a long history of plaintiffs coming out of the woodwork after a motion picture has achieved critical and financial success to claim credit – and proceeds – where none is due”.
He goes on to declare there are little similarities between the two projects: “Looney is a treatment and synopsis for a live-action picture about the struggles and growth of a male human animator who creates a world of animated characters,” he writes. “Zootopia is an animated motion picture about a bunny protagonist who interacts only with anthropomorphic talking animals. There are no humans, and there is no live-action component.”
Zootopia, about an unlikely alliance between a rabbit police officer and a con artist fox, featured the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, and Shakira, among others.