Netflix is being sued for $105 million after hard drives containing unreleased content, including a copy of the Nicolas Cage war thriller Fortitude, were taken from the Streamer’s Los Angeles offices. The action has been brought by Swiss producer and financier Simon Afram together with his company Op-Fortitude Ltd in California federal court. Afram invested more than $45 million of his own money in the project, which took over seven years to complete. Directed by Simon West, Fortitude is a Second World War spy drama based on the real Allied deception campaign known as Operation Fortitude. Nicolas Cage plays Dusko Popov, the double agent said to have inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond. The cast also features Matthew Goode, Michael Sheen, Ben Kingsley and others.[1]
According to the claim, an associate producer hand-delivered an unencrypted master digital cinema package on a hard drive to Netflix’s Sunset Bronson Studios offices on 15 June 2026. Netflix had shown interest after receiving promotional materials the previous December and asked them to screen the film internally as a possible acquisition. The producers say they told Netflix the copy was unencrypted, instructed the company to delete all files after viewing, and asked to be notified when the drive was ready for collection. Nine or ten days later, on 25 June 2026, Netflix’s head of film acquisitions, Sean Berney, emailed to report that “someone stole a good number of drives from our office desks this past week.” The Fortitude drive was among them. Netflix later stated that the other drives recovered in its internal inquiry were empty.
The plaintiffs argue that the film’s commercial value has been destroyed. Any future buyer would face the constant risk of the picture appearing on piracy sites, making a sale far harder. International release plans and an awards campaign have been delayed. The suit seeks at least $105 million, roughly 2.5 times the production budget, plus other damages.
Netflix disputes liability. A spokesperson said the company “disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards.” While Netflix does not own the rights to Fortitude, it says it has investigated the incident and is monitoring known piracy sites for any unauthorized copies. The streamer has also offered practical support to the filmmakers.
Commenting on the wider lessons for the entertainment sector, Jon Fielding, Managing Director, EMEA, at Apricorn, observed, “Hard drives are a staple way of storing and sharing film in the entertainment industry. Capable of storing massive amounts of data, they provide the versatility to record in the field at rugged locations or to transport film recordings between offices, as happened here. But storage is not the only requirement; security should also be paramount."
"That content has seen time and money invested in its production, upwards of millions of dollars, all of which can go to waste if it’s leaked online .... The film industry will always need high-capacity portable media, but it must focus more on how that media is protected."
"If those drives had used properly implemented hardware-based encryption, that data would not be at risk. Delete mechanisms for repeated password attempts could also have provided additional assurance that the data would not be recoverable by the thieves. The cost to Netflix would then run into a few hundred dollars as opposed to the $105m lawsuit they are facing today.” Fielding concludes. The case continues. No unauthorized online release of Fortitude has yet been reported, but the producers maintain that the mere possibility has already inflicted irreversible commercial harm.
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[1] https://www.cybersecurityintelligence.com/blog/netflix-faces-105-million-claim-over-stolen-movie-9597.html
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