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An allegedly stolen Nicolas Cage movie is at the center of a messy legal drama between Netflix and the film’s producer.
Simon Afram and his production company, Op-Fortitude, sued Netflix on Wednesday after a copy of its upcoming World War II movie, Fortitude , was allegedly stolen from the streaming company’s Hollywood offices.
The lawsuit seeks at least $105 million in damages, arguing that the theft has jeopardized the future of the movie.
According to the complaint , Netflix was considering buying rights to the film and arranged to screen it on June 16. An associate producer delivered a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) to Netflix the day before the screening.
A DCP is a hard drive used to screen movies in theaters. Netflix’s delivery instructions said that if the DCP was encrypted, the filmmakers should keep its digital keys active through the end of June 16. The complaint says the producer instead delivered an unencrypted DCP and told Netflix, both verbally and in writing, to delete its files after the screening.
In the following weeks, the filmmakers repeatedly tried to arrange a time to pick up the DCP, but Netflix allegedly kept postponing.
Finally, on June 25, Sean Berney, director of Netflix's original film division, sent them an email with the subject line “Stolen DCP.”
“Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week,” Berney wrote in the email, according to the complaint.
He added that Netflix had “been working through this [its] with security teams to no luck” and that its piracy teams were “on high alert.”
The lawsuit argues that the theft has made Fortitude harder to sell because any potential buyer would have to consider the possibility that the movie could leak online.
“The Film's value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work. By losing control of the Film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the Film’s marketability,” the lawsuit reads.
Afram and Op-Fortitude are now accusing Netflix of breach of an implied contract.
"Netflix disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards," a Netflix spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement. "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."
Those measures include a thorough investigation and an offer to monitor piracy sites for any unauthorized distribution or sale of the movie.
Still, Netflix does not appear too happy with Afram’s legal team.
"We have declined to share anything about our ongoing investigation with the law firm representing Simon 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,” the Netflix spokesperson said.
Fortitude appears to be a passion project for Afram, who also wrote the script. The film is based on the story of Operation Fortitude, a deception campaign that used fake armies and military equipment to distract Nazi Germany from the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Nicolas Cage stars in the film as real-life spy Dusko Popov.
This is not the first lawsuit tied to the project. Afram previously sued Martin Scorsese, alleging that the director accepted $500,000 to serve as an executive producer but did little to help with the film. That lawsuit was settled in 2024
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