Overview
- The complaint says an associate producer hand-delivered a digital cinema package to Netflix’s Los Angeles office and that the company screened the film before later notifying the filmmakers that several hard drives, including the one with the movie, were stolen.
- Plaintiffs filed the federal suit seeking at least $105 million after Netflix emailed on June 25 that “someone stole a good amount of drives,” according to emails quoted in the filing.
- Netflix rejects legal liability for the loss, saying the film was delivered without industry-standard protections and that it is investigating and offering to monitor piracy sites for any unauthorized copies.
- The producers say the unencrypted master has already harmed the film’s marketability because buyers, insurers and awards planners must now be told an unsecured copy exists, and they have paused sales efforts.
- Fortitude is a privately financed World War II thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Ben Kingsley that cost about $45 million to make and has prior legal history tied to its production, which the lawsuit cites as background to the dispute.