Do you want to build a lawsuit? A woman reportedly is suing Disney for the whopping sum of $250 million (with an "M") because she is convinced that the entertainment giant based Frozen on her 2010 autobiography, and not on the fables of Hans Christian Andersen.
Let it go! All the way to court.
You can scan the entire lawsuit here. Essentially, Isabella Tanikumi filed a suit against the Walt Disney Company in the U.S. District Court claiming that the study plagiarized her book Living My Truth in the plot of the smash-hit animated feature Frozen. It’s only when she starts to map out the similarities between Frozen and her autobiography that things start to fall apart. For instance, she claims:
1. Both stories take place in a village at the base of a snow covered mountain.
2. Both stories contain two sisters who are close in age.
3. Both sisters love each other deeply.
4. One of the sisters is injured in a horrible accident. The lawsuit woman’s sister falls in custard. Anna from Frozen hurts her head.
5. Both sisters lose memory of their accidents.
6. Lawsuit sisters were caught in a horrible earthquake. Frozen sisters lost their parents in a boating accident. These situations pushed everyone together.
7. Lawsuit sister and Ana both fall for a tall, dark and handsome man.
8. The sisters meet two love interests named Hans and Cristoff and Hans and Kristoff.
9. Both Kristoff and Cristoff tell the women about someone they know with healing powers.
10. Both sisters get betrayed by their love interests.
11. Lawsuit sister and Elsa both become reclusive.
12. Lawsuit sister and Elsa both try to hide their injuries.
13. Both stories continue a key scene under the moon.
14. Both defects are exposed in front of children.
15. The cover of the lawsuit girl’s memoir is a hand with sprinkles. The cover of the Frozen DVD is a hand with sprinkles.
16. Both stories use open gates as metophors.
17. Lawsuit sister and Elsa both die, though Elsa comes back to life.
18. Both stories talk about hearts being cold.
All in all, Isabella Tanikumi comes up with 18 tenuous similarities between her autobiography and Frozen, which doesn’t seem like a lot, considering the universal nature of the items that she has singled out. She might as well mention that both stories were written using words, and that they both might have been penned on paper. The court likely is just going to toss this whole thing out, so why not have some real fun with it, right?
The money is the eye-catcher. Asking for $250 million is BEYOND egregious. Would Tanikumi even bother with a lawsuit if Frozen had earned $20 million at the box office? Probably not. But the animation behemoth took in a massive $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. It is dominating on the home video circuit. It had the third-highest domestic gross for 2013, despite having opened in November. And "plaintiffs" like Tanikumi want a piece of the pie.
We’ll continue to track the progress of this lawsuit. Do you think she has a case? Or is this a case of someone being greedy, and trying to seize an opportunity? Weigh in below.
