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July 30, 2026 / 5:36 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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A U.K.-based production company and a filmmaker are suing Netflix for $105 million, alleging the streaming company lost a drive containing a copy of an unreleased espionage movie, which they claim undermined its commercial prospects.The complaint filed on Wednesday in California district court alleges that the film's associate producer, Daniel Haido, hand-delivered an unencrypted master copy of the film to Netflix so the company could screen it as a potential buyer. Haido verbally instructed the employee to delete the files after the screening, according to the suit.A little over a week after the screening, Netflix emailed the filmmakers to say the drive had been stolen, the plaintiffs allege."Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week," a Netflix executive wrote in the email, according to the suit. The complaint notes the movie, entitled "Fortitude," took over seven years to make and cost $45 million. It tells the story of a secret mission called Operation Fortitude during World War II that was orchestrated to mislead the Nazis about the Allied invasion of Europe.The film stars Nicolas Cage as Dusko Popov, a real-life spy during World War II, as well as Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman.The plaintiffs said studios will now be dissuaded from buying the rights to the movie, knowing that a version of it could be released by a third party for free.
