Producer sues Netflix over lost unreleased Nicolas Cage movie

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Set us as preferred A producer sued Netflix on Wednesday, alleging the streamer lost an unreleased copy of a new Nicholas Cage movie and seeking damages of at least $105 million.Producer Simon Afram invested more than $45 million of his own money making “Fortitude,” a film that takes place during World War II and features actors including Cage, Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman, according to the lawsuit.

The movie, described as “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “Inglourious Basterds,” is based on Operation Fortitude, an effort during World War II in which double agents set a trap for Adolf Hitler and his armies.The movie has not yet been released and is seeking buyers.

“Fortitude” had its own mystery last month when the drive that once held the movie went missing.On June 15, Daniel Haido, an associate producer of “Fortitude,” dropped off an unencrypted copy of the movie for Netflix to view and instructed the staff to delete the files after the screening.

Haido also told Netflix to notify him when the drive was ready for pick up, but Netflix was unresponsive to several efforts to pick up the drive, the lawsuit said.On June 25, Netflix notified Haido that the drive had been stolen.

“Unfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week,” Sean Berney, a director for original film at Netflix, wrote in a June 25 email, according to the lawsuit.“We’ve been working through this with our security teams to no luck.” Berney in his email offered to reimburse Afram’s company for the missing drive or create a new digital cinema package, according to the lawsuit.

But Afram in his lawsuit said the damage was much greater than that.He is seeking economic damages of at least $105 million, along with other costs.

“By losing control of the Film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivi...