A film producer is suing Netflix for at least $105 million after an unencrypted master copy of his unreleased Nicolas Cage World War II movie was stolen from the company’s Hollywood offices.
Swiss businessman Simon Afram and his company Op-Fortitude filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Afram wrote the script for Fortitude, financed more than $45 million of the production over seven years, and was shopping the film to distributors, including Netflix.
According to the complaint, an associate producer hand-delivered a Digital Cinema Package of the film to Netflix’s Sunset Bronson Studios on June 15 at the company’s request for a potential acquisition screening. The drive was unencrypted. Netflix screened the movie around June 16. When the producers later tried to arrange pickup, the company was unresponsive for more than a week.
On June 25, a Netflix executive emailed that “someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week.” The lawsuit alleges Netflix left the high-value, unencrypted drive vulnerable on a desk rather than securing it properly, destroying the film’s exclusivity and market value because of the risk it could surface on piracy sites.
Fortitude, directed by Simon West, stars Cage as real-life double agent Duško Popov, along with Ben Kingsley, Matthew Goode and others. It is based on the Allied deception operation of the same name during World War II.
In a statement, Netflix disputed that it bears responsibility for a film delivered without industry-standard safeguards. The company said it does not own the rights to Fortitude, takes content security seriously, investigated the theft, and is monitoring piracy sites. Netflix also accused the producer’s representatives of “hostile attempts to extort money,” including an immediate demand for $165 million.
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