A Vancouver restaurateur who is suing Hollywood director James Cameron for alleged copyright violations over the blockbuster film Avatar said he will be asking a federal court judge for an injunction to stop production of Avatar 2 and 3.
Emil Malak, 59, said he is determined to take his lawsuit, filed March 1, 2012 against Cameron, his company Lightstorm Entertainment, and 20th Century Fox Film Corp. all the way to the bitter end.
“I’m not going to go away because they’re big,” said Malak at his Bellagio Cafe at the convention centre Wednesday. “You can’t let the big boys crush you down.”
Malak originally filed a civil suit in B.C. Supreme Court in 2010 after being alerted to similarities in both stories by his graphic designer.
Malak claims Cameron’s top-grossing Avatar used material from his original screenplay titled Terra Incognita, which shares a similar premise of humans wanting to mine precious minerals on a planet inhabited by indigenous people who resisted colonization.
There are similarities in characters’ names, as well as physical features, including spots on the face, yellow eyes, tails and braided hair. Avatar also features a “Home Tree” which holds the collective memories of the alien people, while Malak’s version has a “Life Tree.”
Malak said he copyrighted drafts of Terra Incognito with the Writers Guild of Canada 10 times between 1998 and 2003 because he was worried about “the big boys who will try and alter my basic concept and claim it as their own.”
He said he had sent Cameron a copy of the screenplay in 2002 when Cameron’s TV series Dark Angel was filming at the Vancouver Art Gallery, across the street from Malak’s Bellagio Cafe on Hornby Street.
In a March 2010 meeting with studio executives, he was told the director wrote the screenplay for Avatar two years before Malak did, in 1996.
They sent him a screen shot of a computer file showing March 25, 1996 as the creation date of the Avatar screenplay. But Malak said his computer engineers told him the file was digitally altered.
He said he’s willing to drop his lawsuit and chalk up the uncanny coincidence to “divine intervention” if he can see the original file and verify its origins independently. He said he’s been stonewalled for two years.
“Look, it’s simple. Give us the file, and we’ll pull out,” he said, adding the refusal is making him believe the file doesn’t exist.
Avatar, released in 2009, is the highest-grossing film of all time, raking n more than $2 billion after seven weekends of release. Two sequels are in the works with tentative release dates of December 2014 and December 2015 respectively.
Last month, Malak offered to drop the lawsuit for a $100-million settlement. Cameron and 20th Century Fox did not respond.
On Wednesday, Malak insisted it wasn’t about the money.
He wants Cameron to admit he used the “building blocks” of his work in making Avatar, adding he was gratified his idea was adapted by a “genius director” and that he will be content with a settlement of “whatever we think is fair.”
Cameron’s lawyer, Brian Gray of Toronto firm Norton Rose Canada LLP, said his clients will “vigorously defend the matter,” and that Malak’s claim is “meritless.”
When asked whether his clients are prepared to produce the original file, he said: “In the fullness of time, we will do what the court requires in terms of disclosure.”
Grey said it is “odd” Malak is claiming copyright infringement when he hasn’t even seen the movie.
Malak, who admits he can’t bring himself to watch the film, said it actually bolsters his case that other people have told him about the similarities: “It means I’m not biased. I got other people to make the comparisons.”
Despite going up against Hollywood powerhouses, Malak said he is unfazed.
“I’m not stressed out at all. I believe in what I do, and I believe I’m right.”
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