Avatar director James Cameron has been hit with a new copyright lawsuit.

Elijah Schkeiban claims he created a fantasy franchise, called Bats & Butterflies, in 1988 - and it closely resembles Cameron's 2010 blockbuster.

Schkebian's story chronicled a hero's travels to a faraway planet, called Altair. In the project, the lead character finds himself lost in a forest and befriends a number of indigenous creatures and partners with a community of butterflies.

On Monday Schkeiban filed suit against Cameron in California, alleging the movie star lifted plot ideas and characters from his book, insisting the similarities between the works simply couldn't be coincidental, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

This marks the latest legal hurdle for Cameron, who has been plagued by a slew of similar allegations since the movie's premiere in 2009 - in December he was hit with a $2.5 billion copyright lawsuit by a sci-fi screenwriter and earlier that month another plaintiff filed copyright infringement papers against Cameron, claiming he approached bosses at the director's production company Lightstorm Entertainment with an idea for an "environmentally themed 3D epic" back in 1999.

Avatar has raked in $2.78 billion worldwide to become the highest-grossing film of all time.