A Vancouver restaurateur and amateur screenwriter claims James Cameron borrowed key concepts from a screenplay he sent him years ago about a mineral-rich blue planet complete with dragons and a mystical tree.
And if he can't prove otherwise, Emil Malak wants Cameron to pay $100 million for allegedly violating copyright laws and using his ideas for the film "Avatar."
Malak told CTV's Canada AM he wrote a screenplay in 1997 for a film called "Terra Incognita."
In 2000 and 2001, when he heard Cameron was filming the sci-fi series "Dark Angel" near his restaurant in Vancouver, he visited the set and later sent a copy of his script to one of Cameron's producers.
Malak said they never responded.
"I never heard until 2009 when my colour graphic designer called me and said 'he's taken all your building blocks on the story and the characters and the graphics.' I went to the Internet to look and I was quite surprised," he said.
Malak alleges dozens of elements from his script were used in Cameron's blockbuster 3-D film, including character names, their appearance and even the concept of a blue planet rich with precious minerals and complete with a mystical tree of life.
In 2010, Malak wrote to 20th Century Fox and expressed his concern. They agreed to a meeting, he said, but only wanted to discuss the timeframe in which Malak's screenplay was written.
"They did not want to discuss the similarities and the comparison they wanted to discuss just the dates. I registered mine with the Writers Guild of Canada 10 times to make sure it was protected between 1998 and 2003, and they said ‘Well. James Cameron wrote his in 1996, you lose'," Malak said.
The lawyers said Cameron wrote "Avatar" on his personal computer, and agreed to Malak's request to send an image of the first page from the file, as well as a few pages from inside the script.
Those images arrived in spring 2010.
"I had some computer experts check it and they said no way it was done in 1996 so we've been here a year-and-a-half dancing with 20th Century Fox asking for the original file and we haven't received it yet," he said, adding that he would drop his lawsuit if those files proved Cameron's claim.
This month Malak filed a lawsuit with the Federal Court of Canada asking the court to order Cameron to provide the original computer file he says he wrote in 1996.
"The facts are there, they speak for themselves. Produce a file and I will go away, and it's divine intervention," Malak said, calling the match-up a David and Goliath battle but vowing he's willing to stick it out.
"I'm extremely scared but in life you have to do what you believe in. I believe James Cameron took all my building blocks, not just the story but the characters. He even used some of the same names and you have to do what you believe in, in life, even when these are big boys."
Entertainment lawyer Ed Reinbergs said Malak will need that level of commitment to his cause if he hopes to win his case.
While he said Malak has a legitimate case of copyright infringement, he warned he will likely have years of court dates and lawyers' fees ahead of him.
"Having the case is one thing but being able to see it through the court for the number of years it might take to do this, he's going to have to have the wherewithal and strength to get through a number of years in front of a judge," Reinbergs told Canada AM.
He said the case will succeed or fail on the "intangibles" or unknowns -- such as the evidence Cameron's lawyers say they have that he created the concept two years before Malak.
"He hasn't put forward the evidence yet. We don't know what that evidence is going to be and it could be quite damaging," Reinbergs said.
