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Netflix is being sued for $105 million after a hard drive containing an unreleased Nicolas Cage WWII thriller was allegedly stolen from its Los Angeles office.
The lawsuit was filed by Swiss producer Simon Afram and his production company Op-Fortitude Ltd., which claims Netflix’s negligence has ruined the film’s commercial prospects.
The movie, titled Fortitude, took seven years to complete on a production budget of over $45 million.
Netflix denies any wrongdoing
A producer hand-delivered the film’s master drive to Netflix’s Sunset Bronson Studios office on June 15, 2026, for an internal screening the following day.
According to TheWrap, plaintiffs said they explicitly told Netflix the drive was unencrypted, asked for the files to be deleted after the screening, and requested notification once it was ready for pickup. This request was left unanswered for a week, according to the lawsuit.
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Netflix’s head of film acquisitions emailed the producers on June 25 to say “a good amount of drives” had been stolen from office desks, including a copy of Fortitude.
The producers argue the film’s value has been destroyed by the constant risk of it leaking online, forcing them to pause their international sales and awards campaign.
Netflix has denied any wrongdoing, arguing it does not bear responsibility for a film delivered without industry-standard safeguards like encryption. The company says it has launched an internal investigation and placed its piracy teams on alert, though it has declined to share findings with the plaintiffs, accusing them of demanding an initial $165 million settlement in bad faith.
It is not the first time Netflix has faced backlash over a security lapse. In 2024, the company confirmed a data breach after a post-production partner was compromised, leading to episodes of Arcane, Heartstopper and several other titles leaking online ahead of their release.
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