Disney's Frozen Sued For $250 Million By Woman Who Says Writers Stole Her Life Story

Disney's Frozen Sued For $250 Million By Woman Who Says Writers Stole Her Life Story
AP

Disney's 'Frozen' is being sued for $250 million (£153 million) because a woman says its writers stole her life story.

Author Isabella Tanikumi claims Frozen writers plagiarised her story, characters and plots from her own semi-autobiographical book.

Entertainment website TMZ said Tanikumi's 2010 book, Yearnings of the Heart, tells of her birth in the Andean Mountains, surviving the 1970 Huaraz earthquake and the death of her sister.

It also features her star-crossed romance with Eduardo. Missing from her account of her childhood in Peru and immigration to America, however, are trolls, talking snowmen and a hit song beloved by children around the world.

Story continues after this video.

In the film, which will be getting a sequel next year in the form of a short film, Princess Elsa has the power to control snow and ice, but accidentally injures her sister Anna, who is healed by a troll king.

When another outburst of her powers causes a panicked Elsa to flee the kingdom, unleashing an eternal winter, Anna begins a quest to find her and reverse the big freeze, helped by iceman Kristoff and his trusty reindeer Sven.

We're not sure we see the similarities...

Frozen was released in 2013 and is thought to have been inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, The Snow Queen, rather than by a Peruvian author's hard-bitten childhood memoir.

The film is best known for the song, Let it Go, which is performed by Idina Menzel as Elsa the Snow Queen and has become a chart hit across the world.

The magical musical has raked in a staggering $1.2 billion at the box office, making it the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, after Toy Story 3 and The Lion King.

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