Producer sues Netflix over lost unreleased Nicolas Cage movie

A shaper sued Netflix connected Wednesday, alleging the streamer mislaid an unreleased transcript of a caller Nicholas Cage movie and seeking damages of astatine slightest $105 million.

Producer Simon Afram invested much than $45 cardinal of his ain wealth making “Fortitude,” a movie that takes spot during World War II and features actors including Cage, Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman, according to the lawsuit. The movie, described arsenic “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “Inglourious Basterds,” is based connected Operation Fortitude, an effort during World War II successful which treble agents acceptable a trap for Adolf Hitler and his armies. The movie has not yet been released and is seeking buyers.

“Fortitude” had its ain enigma past period erstwhile the thrust that erstwhile held the movie went missing.

On June 15, Daniel Haido, an subordinate shaper of “Fortitude,” dropped disconnected an unencrypted transcript of the movie for Netflix to presumption and instructed the unit to delete the files aft the screening. Haido besides told Netflix to notify him erstwhile the thrust was acceptable for prime up, but Netflix was unresponsive to respective efforts to prime up the drive, the suit said. On June 25, Netflix notified Haido that the thrust had been stolen.

“Unfortunately, idiosyncratic stole a bully magnitude of drives from our bureau desks this past week,” Sean Berney, a manager for archetypal movie astatine Netflix, wrote successful a June 25 email, according to the lawsuit. “We’ve been moving done this with our information teams to nary luck.”

Berney successful his email offered to reimburse Afram’s institution for the missing thrust oregon make a caller integer cinema package, according to the lawsuit.

But Afram successful his suit said the harm was overmuch greater than that. He is seeking economical damages of astatine slightest $105 million, on with different costs.

“By losing power of the Film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the Film’s marketability,” his suit said. “It is not fathomable that a blase purchaser would put tens of millions of dollars to get the Film — and tens of millions much to marketplace it — portion facing the changeless hazard that it could look online to beryllium viewed wide for escaped astatine immoderate time.”

Netflix successful a connection said it is conducting an probe and is offering to show piracy sites for immoderate unauthorized organisation oregon merchantability of the film. The streamer accused Afram’s instrumentality steadfast of “hostile attempts to extort wealth from Netflix implicit this concern — including instantly demanding $165 cardinal for the movie alternatively than enactment with america successful bully faith.”

“Netflix disputes immoderate assertion that it bears the hazard of nonaccomplishment for a movie delivered without the due industry-standard safeguards,” the institution said successful a statement. “While we bash not ain the rights to ‘Fortitude,’ we instrumentality contented information earnestly and person taken other measures to enactment the filmmaker and his team.”

Akerman LLP, 1 of the firms representing Afram successful his lawsuit, declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Johnson & Johnson LLP did not instantly instrumentality a petition for comment.