Netflix is facing a nine-figure lawsuit over a Nicolas Cage movie it never even acquired. Swiss producer Simon Afram is suing the streamer for $105 million, alleging Netflix lost an unencrypted digital copy of his WWII spy thriller Fortitude, starring Cage and Ben Kingsley, after it was dropped off at company headquarters in June for consideration, Variety reports. More than a week later, Netflix acknowledged that it had been stolen.
- "This is a first for us," Sean Berney, Netflix's head of film acquisitions, wrote in an email cited in the lawsuit. "Unfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week. We've been working through this with our security teams to no luck. Our piracy teams are on high alert with the breach and will monitor."
Afram says Netflix was responsible for securing the film and claims its alleged negligence threatens the movie's value. Netflix counters that industry-standard encryption wasn't used and denies liability. "Netflix disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards," a company spokesman said, per the Hollywood Reporter. "While we do not own the rights to Fortitude, we take content security seriously and have taken extra measures to support the filmmaker and his team."
In the lawsuit, Afram and his company, Op-Fortitude, say the theft has made the film harder to sell because of the risk of a leak. They say they have paused sales efforts despite interest from multiple distributors. Netflix says it isn't sharing information about its investigation with the law firm representing Afram "given their hostile attempts to extort money from Netflix over this situation—including immediately demanding $165 million for the film rather than work with us in good faith." Sources tell Variety that there's no sign the movie has been leaked.
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