July 31 (UPI) — A production company is suing Netflix for $105 million for losing a master copy of an unreleased movie, which it claims will hurt its commercial prospects
The suit, which was filed in a California district court, said the film’s associate producer hand-delivered a drive with an unencrypted master copy of the movie, Fortitude, for Netflix to watch as a potential buyer, telling the employee to delete the files after viewing
About a week later, Netflix emailed the company to say the drive was stolen, the complaint alleged. “Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week.”
A Netflix spokesperson <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netflix-lawsuit-lost-nicolas-cage-movie/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>told CBS News that the company “disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards.”
But the filmmakers allege that Netflix specifically told them to deliver it unencrypted. They said they followed Netflix’s delivery instructions, which stated: “If the DCP is encrypted, please have the keys open from the time the asset lands through EOD on 6/16.”
The complaint alleged that the producer told a Netflix staffer that the copy was unencrypted
“While we do not own the rights to Fortitude, we take content security seriously and have taken extra measures to support the filmmaker and his team,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News
Fortitude tells the story of a secret mission called Operation Fortitude during World War II. It was designed to mislead Germany about the Allied invasion on D-Day in 1944
The movie was directed by Simon West and stars Nicolas Cage as Serbian double agent Duško Popov, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Goode, Michael Sheen, Ron Perlman, Alice Eve, Ed Skrein and Jordi Mollà
The production company alleges that other film studios will not want to buy the rights knowing that a version could be released by a third party for free
“The film’s value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work,” the complaint said. “By losing control of the film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the film’s marketability.”
“It is not fathomable that a sophisticated buyer would invest tens of millions of dollars to acquire the film — and tens of millions more to market it — while facing the constant risk that it could appear online to be viewed widely for free at any time,” the complaint said
