A Vancouver man is suing Twentieth Century Fox and James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment for copyright infringement, alleging that there are too many similarities between Avatar and a story he first penned in 1998.

Writer/restaurateur Emil Malak filed suit on Monday in B.C. Supreme Court for an undisclosed sum, claiming that elements of his Terra Incognita appear in the sci-fi blockbuster that on Sunday narrowly missed winning the Oscar for best picture.

‘I prefer to settle this amicably if it can be settled,’ he tells Playback Daily. ‘If it doesn’t, I’m not going to let the big boys make mincemeat out of me.’

Terra Incognita — a story Malak originally wrote for his child — is set in the future on a blue planet while the existence of Earth itself is threatened. The hero, as in Avatar, must prove himself to the indigenous people though a series of tests. It has since been reworked into a feature screenplay, a treatment for a TV series and as an unpublished graphic novel. Each of the 10 versions was registered with the Writers Guild of Canada, he says.

Malak says he sent it to several studios, including Lightstorm, and dismisses talk that Avatar came to Cameron in a dream in 1996. ‘Am I accusing James Cameron of stealing my stuff? No. I have lots of respect for [him],’ he says. ‘What happened was, it maybe came across his desk… Maybe it was with him for two or three years and got embedded in his head.’

Malak refuses to see Avatar, which at last count had grossed some $706 million in North America alone.

Representatives at Fox were not immediately available for comment.