COOK ON CARLAW: I had that idea, too

If you watched the Oscars, you know that James Cameron's Avatar didn't win best picture but it has won most tickets sold.

As of this week, the movie has grossed $2.4 billion worldwide, which is staggering since the movie was only released four months ago.

But now a Vancouver restaurateur is suing Cameron and his production company because "some" of the ideas in Avatar were actually his. Canadian Emil Malak wrote a script in 1996 and sent it to a Hollywood production company. Twelve years later, Cameron releases the movie Avatar and according to our Canadian restaurateur, there are a lot of similar ideas.

Now this lawsuit will take years and Malak could make a ton of money if his suit wins but for me it's wild knowing someone else had a similar idea and they lived miles away.

Now I have no idea how this suit will work out, but I do know that over the years I've had some ideas only to find out that someone else had them too and eventually made a movie about it.

Now I'll tell you right off the bat, I didn't write a script for any of these ideas but who cares, I had the idea. Years ago I was in the schoolyard and I had a fight with this guy and even though he was bigger than me, I won. After it was finished I thought I could make a great movie about my victory.

Well so did Sylvester Stallone. He made Rocky and won an academy award.

There was another time when I was in school and I really liked this girl but she didn't like me so I did something incredible, which got her to like me. Well I thought at the time wouldn't this make a great movie, then they made Spider-Man, which is sort of what I had in mind.

Now I've never been to war so the Saving Private Ryan film really wasn't my story but I think it could have been. During my wilder college years, I swear that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was my autobiography. I know there was a book first, but let's be real you can't pack a whole bunch of emotions into a book like you can a movie, now can you?

There have been others but you're getting the point that I've had a lot of great movie ideas, I just haven't written them down, which is a good thing because I don't think I'm ever available in March to accept an Oscar anyway.