Lawsuit for $105 million filed against Netflix
An unreleased film starring American actor Nicolas Cage has become the center of a major legal dispute in Hollywood, after its producer filed a lawsuit in a California state court against Netflix, seeking damages of up to $105 million, over the theft of the film’s original copy from the company’s offices. The case highlights the ongoing risks facing the film industry in protecting unreleased works, despite significant advances in content security technologies.
According to Reuters, lawyers for producer Simon Abram stated in the complaint that the Fortitude film team delivered an unencrypted original copy of the work to Netflix at its request, for preliminary review as part of ongoing negotiations to sell distribution rights. They noted that Abram had invested more than $45 million in producing the film, which took about seven years to develop and complete, and that he had hoped to finalize a sale to Netflix or another global distributor.
The lawsuit claims the crisis began just nine days after the copy was delivered, when the filmmakers received an email from Netflix informing them that several hard drives had been stolen from its Hollywood offices, including the drive containing the original copy of Fortitude. The producer argues that the incident did not merely result in the loss of a film copy, but directly damaged its commercial value. According to the lawsuit, distributors have become more hesitant to acquire works that face the risk of being leaked via piracy sites at any time, which could lead to the film being made available to the public for free before its official release, thereby undermining the chances of recouping production costs and generating profits.
Abram’s lawyers accused Netflix of failing to take adequate security measures to protect hard drives containing unpublished cinematic material, alleging that the company fell short in providing necessary safeguards to preserve these copies within its premises, despite their sensitivity and high financial value.
According to Al Jazeera, Netflix rejected these allegations, stating in a statement that the producer was the one who sent an unencrypted copy that did not comply with industry-standard protection measures, and that the company bears no responsibility for losses resulting from that decision.
