$105 Million Lawsuit Hits Netflix Over Lost Nicolas Cage Spy Film!

“Outrageous” might be the word an ex-president would use. What’s happening behind the scenes of the movie Fortitude – a historical action and espionage film based on a true story – is almost as bizarre as the film’s plot itself.

Fortitude marks a reunion between Nicolas Cage and director Simon West (Tomb Raider, Old Guy), who previously worked together in 1997 on the film Con Air, a cult classic typical of the 1990s. In Fortitude, Nicolas Cage – known as Hollywood’s busiest actor – portrays Dušan Popov, a real-life double agent thought to have inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond character.

The film draws from the true story of British secret service agents who executed unprecedented strategic operations to deceive Nazi leaders and help change the course of World War II. The cast also includes Matthew Goode, Ben Kingsley, Ed Skrein, Ron Perlman, and Michael Sheen — a truly stellar lineup.

What is Fortitude’s producer accusing Netflix of?

Simon Afram, the producer of Fortitude, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix. He claims that the platform is responsible for the theft of the hard drive containing the film, which is yet to find a distributor, after it was delivered to Netflix’s headquarters for a screening and potential purchase.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks damages of at least $105 million.

According to the lawsuit (provided by Deadline), Simon Afram, the film’s producer, screenwriter, and financier, along with production company Op-Fortitude Limited, claim they delivered an unencrypted digital copy of the film to Netflix for a potential purchase, with instructions to delete the files after viewing.

The lawsuit states that after viewing the film around June 16, Netflix “did not provide, for over a week, the promised instructions regarding the removal of the unencrypted DCP file“. Instead, in the afternoon of June 25, 2026, a Netflix executive emailed the plaintiffs with the subject “Stolen PCP“, referring to the plaintiffs’ unencrypted DCP, and wrote: “someone stole a significant number of hard drives from our office last week.“

According to the lawsuit, the Netflix executive stated that his company had worked with security teams “unsuccessfully“, but that anti-piracy teams were “on high alert“.

What are the circumstances of the theft?

“The email from Netflix indicated that the company had been aware of the DCP theft for perhaps a whole week without ever informing the plaintiffs that their DCP, which had cost over $45 million to produce, had been stolen directly from a Netflix office.“

According to the lawsuit, the executive assured that the stolen hard drive would likely be “sold for scrap, given that it requires a key to unlock an encrypted DCP“. However, Simon Afram claims: “Netflix knew that the DCP was not encrypted and that it could be opened, viewed, published, copied, or distributed without any key“.

The lawsuit also states that Netflix has refused to disclose whether it had filed a police report or sought assistance from law enforcement. The complaint details that on Tuesday, Netflix rejected the producer’s request to involve “the Los Angeles Police Department, with whom the plaintiffs had filed a complaint regarding the theft, in the internal investigation carried out by Netflix on this theft“.

Case pending.