Overview
- According to court papers, a digital cinema package for Fortitude was delivered to Netflix’s Los Angeles office on June 15 and the storage drive later went missing from the company’s premises.
- Producer Simon Afram filed a federal lawsuit seeking $105 million, saying the loss has hindered sales talks and could harm insurance, marketing and awards eligibility for the unreleased film.
- Netflix told the producers in email that multiple drives were stolen, said it has investigated and offered to monitor piracy sites, and has publicly denied liability for assets delivered without standard safeguards.
- A central dispute in the case concerns encryption and key handling: Afram’s filing quotes Netflix directions to have decryption keys open through end of day June 16, and the parties now disagree over who bore the risk when the DCP was deliveried unencrypted.
- There is no public sign that Fortitude has leaked online, but the film’s high-profile cast and $45 million budget raise commercial stakes and are likely to prompt closer industry scrutiny of how studios store and share pre-release content.