Lawsuit claims Netflix lost hard drive with Nicolas Cage spy film

Netflix was sued for $105 million after a hard drive holding an unreleased Nicolas Cage spy thriller allegedly disappeared from its Los Angeles office. The complaint says the drive contained an unencrypted copy of Fortitude, a $45 million World War II espionage film, and that the loss damaged the movie’s sale prospects.

The plaintiffs, Afram and his company Op-Fortitude, say Netflix compromised the sale of the project by losing a copy of it. Afram has been described as a billionaire movie producer, and the lawsuit casts the dispute as a chain-of-custody breakdown inside one of the world’s most closely watched streaming operations.

The filing says the drive was taken from a Netflix desk, a detail that puts basic handling controls at the center of the case. For a high-value unreleased production, the risk is not just theft of a device but the exposure of the film itself: an unencrypted copy can move beyond the studio’s control in seconds, complicating licensing talks, distribution timing and any insurance claim tied to the master materials.

That is what makes the claim unusual in a streaming-era production pipeline. A $45 million film can pass through multiple hands before release, but the value depends on tracking where the master sits, who can access it and whether the file is protected. When that chain breaks, the damage can extend beyond replacement cost to the sale price, release schedule and contract terms for the cast and financiers.

Fortitude adds another layer because Nicolas Cage’s projects have occasionally been entangled in litigation before. Cage settled a $77,176 lawsuit tied to Shadow of the Vampire, and financiers connected to Left Behind were involved in a separate dispute over $18 million in advertising costs. In this case, the fight is not about a finished performance or a marketing bill, but about whether a missing hard drive crippled the commercial value of an unreleased film before audiences ever saw it.