Netflix has been sued after admitting that an unencrypted drive containing an unreleased, hotly anticipated 2026 blockbuster starring Nicolas Cage was stolen from its offices.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Netflix was accused of waiting a week to warn the production company, Op-Fortitude, that the movie, Fortitude, was swiped, along with other drives that were “stolen right off a Netflix desk.”
“Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week,” Sean Berney, director of Netflix Original Film, said in an email to a production company representative after several attempts to get Netflix to return the drives were allegedly ignored.
Rather than acknowledge the “profound and devastating loss” and likelihood that the movie might be leaked free online at any time, Berney apparently only offered that Netflix would pay for the missing drive. He also “erroneously” claimed that thieves would need a key to unlock the movie, even though Netflix had allegedly asked the production company to unlock the drive prior to delivering it.
Op-Fortitude and Simon Afram, the financier and filmmaker who paid $45 million to get the movie made, think Netflix failed to take basic security measures to prevent the unencrypted drive from being stolen. They’ve asked the court to rule that Netflix owes them “revenues of at least 2.5 times the production budget, or $112,500,000,” as well as other damages, including punitive damages, after allegedly implicitly breaching a contract to delete the screener files and promptly return the drive after viewing.
In response to the lawsuit, Netflix insists that it’s not liable for losing the drive, ruining the movie’s marketing strategy, or potentially making it easier to pirate the film. In fact, the company claims that Afram and the production company are attempting to use the lawsuit to extort money from Netflix, including by issuing a demand letter for $165 million.
In a statement to Ars, a Netflix spokesperson confirmed that none of the other lost drives contained any content. Only Fortitude could be accessed by thieves, solely due to the production company’s failure to encrypt the drive, the spokesperson alleged. It is not the only copy of the movie. And so far there’s no evidence it has been leaked, Netflix said.
