Fortitude, the $45 Million Film Now Worth $105 Million in Court

Screenwriter and producer Simon Afram and British company Op-Fortitude filed a lawsuit against Netflix in a California federal court on July 29, seeking at least $105 million in damages.

According to the complaint, the theft of a digital copy of Fortitude may have compromised the film’s future sale. The production reportedly cost more than $45 million and took seven years to complete.

Fortitude tells the story of the operation of the same name, in which the Allies created phantom armies, fake radio transmissions and a network of double agents to mislead the Nazis about the location of the Normandy landings. After seven years in production, the film has still not reached the screen; nine days inside Netflix’s offices, however, were enough to put it on a course toward the courtroom.

Nine Days Between the Screening and the Theft

Directed by Simon West, the filmmaker behind Con Air, Fortitude stars Nicolas Cage, Ben Kingsley, Michael Sheen, Matthew Goode, Ron Perlman, Alice Eve and Lukas Haas. The film reconstructs the deception campaign that helped convince Hitler that the main Allied landing would take place in the Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy: a strategic operation built on false information that was nevertheless carefully controlled.

According to the lawsuit, on June 15 associate producer Daniel Haido personally delivered a drive containing the film’s Digital Cinema Package to Netflix’s offices. The copy had been requested for an internal screening and a possible acquisition. The DCP was not encrypted, and Haido says he informed the company of this, asking for the files to be deleted after the screening and for the physical drive to be returned.

Netflix allegedly screened the film the following day. On June 25, after several attempts to retrieve the drive, Haido instead received a message stating that someone had stolen several storage devices from desks inside the offices, including the one containing Fortitude.

The Risk Already Has a Price, but Responsibility Does Not

The complaint argues that any potential distributor would now have to be informed that an uncontrolled, unencrypted copy exists, with possible consequences for the acquisition price, insurance coverage, promotional campaign and international distribution.

No illegal release of the film has been reported so far. The damage claimed by the producers therefore concerns the risk itself: a buyer would be expected to invest tens of millions of dollars knowing that Fortitude could appear online for free before its official release.

Netflix, however, denies financial responsibility, arguing that the film was delivered without the protections normally required by the industry. The company says it launched an investigation and offered piracy-site monitoring, while also accusing Afram’s lawyers of failing to cooperate in managing the incident.