I like interesting stories. Let me share one with you. Back in 1977, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg made a bet. A bet that, to date, has made Spielberg more than $40m richer.

The men were making Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind at the same time, and regularly popped onto each other’s sets to provide moral support, back rubs and all those other nice things super best friends do.

On one occasion, while taking a break from a stressful Star Wars set where things weren’t going as he had imagined, Lucas visited Close Encounters and was blown away by the scale and quality of what Spielberg was doing. In a moment of self-doubt Lucas bet his friend’s film would be more successful than his, a wager that Spielberg was happy to accept.

Spielberg said: “George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He didn’t feel Star Wars came up to the vision he initially had. He felt he had just made this little kids’ movie… He said, ‘Oh my God, your movie is going to be so much more successful than Star Wars! This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time. I can’t believe this set. I can’t believe what you’re getting, and oh my goodness.’ He said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade some points with you. You want to trade some points? I’ll give you 2.5% of ‘Star Wars’ if you give me 2.5% of ‘Close Encounters.’ So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll gamble with that. Great.”

And, of course, Spielberg was right to take the bet. Star Wars was the highest-grossing movie of 1977, while Close Encounters was No.3 (Smokey and the Bandit was in second place).

And Lucas actually paid out! Spielberg’s 2.5% of $1.5 billion has earned him almost $40 million so far, and he’s still receiving money today. All because Lucas was envious of what his friend was doing and had a lack of confidence in his project. If only his self-doubt gland wasn’t deactivated years ago, we might have been spared Jar Jar Binks.

For years and years there has been bursts of excitement followed by long periods of inactivity regarding the film adaptation of Wicked.

During those bursts, speculation rages about who should be cast as witches Elphaba and Glinda, with fans generally settling on the nice, safe choices of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth who originated the roles on Broadway.

However, fans are in a state of flappy-handed panic this week, after Idina Menzel revealed that Universal Pictures told her that she and Chenoweth are too old for the roles.

“Too old?!” screamed the internet. “Too old?! That’s disgusting, it’s ageist, sexist, misogynistic, and on and on and on and on and you get the picture. How dare anyone tell these two performers that they are too old to star in the movie of the very musical that they themselves helped make famous.

But the thing is, they are.Wicked first hit Broadway more than a decade ago.

Talented, glamorous ladies they may be, but at 42 and 45 years old respectively, Menzel and Chenoweth are too old to realistically play characters in their late teens/early 20s.

Sure, the entire story could be rewritten to make sure that the pair get to play the roles, but I have a feeling that changing the plot would generate even more fan tantrums than not casting their favourites.

I hope they both appear in the film in some form, that would be a classy thing to do (akin to original Les Mis star Colm Wilkinson’s role in the Les Mis movie) – but let’s not delude ourselves here.

You know what’s always needed a movie made about it? Tupperware, that’s what.

So thank the movie gods that we’re finally getting a feature film about plastic boxes.

The Help director Tate Taylor and producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman (The Fighter), are working on a movie about a famous Tupperware saleswoman called Brownie Wise, and Sandra Bullock is in line to star.

Wise was the person behind the Tupperware parties that helped get the product into every home in the Western world. However, she wound up falling out with Tupperware inventor Earl Tipper, and it is this relationship that the film will revolve around.

Weirdly, The Fighter’s director, David O. Russell is also working on a movie about a household aid. This time it’s the Miracle Mop, and Russell wants to cast Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano, inventor of the self-wringing floor cleaner, in a movie about her life.

My script for Alan Sugar: The E-m@iler Years has never been more valuable.