Producer sues Netflix for $105 million over lacking Nicolas Cage film
A film producer is looking for 105 million {dollars} in damages from ‘Netflix’ after he mentioned a duplicate of his unreleased Nicolas Cage film was stolen from the streaming service’s studios in Hollywood.
Attorneys for producer Simon Afram mentioned in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in California that the filmmakers had delivered an unencrypted grasp copy of the World Struggle II drama ‘Fortitude’ to ‘Netflix’ in June on the firm’s request. Afram invested greater than 45 million {dollars} within the manufacturing, which took seven years to finish and he was within the strategy of attempting to promote the film to Netflix or one other distributor.
9 days later, the plaintiffs have been knowledgeable by way of a ‘Netflix’ electronic mail that ‘somebody stole a superb quantity of drives from our desks this previous week’, together with the one containing ‘Fortitude’, the lawsuit mentioned.
The producers argue that the movie’s worth has been ‘destroyed’ as a result of distributors are unlikely to purchase a movie that might seem on piracy websites. They mentioned ‘Netflix’ ought to have higher secured the arduous drive. “It isn’t fathomable {that a} subtle purchaser would make investments tens of tens of millions of {dollars} to purchase the movie – and tens of tens of millions extra to promote it – whereas dealing with the fixed danger that it might seem on-line to be considered extensively without spending a dime at any time,” the lawsuit mentioned. The lawsuit has requested for not less than $105 {dollars} million in damages.
In an announcement, Netflix mentioned it ‘disputes any declare that it bears the danger of loss for a movie delivered with out the right industry-standard safeguards’.
‘Whereas we don’t personal the rights to ‘Fortitude’, we take content material safety significantly and have taken additional measures to assist the filmmaker and his crew’, together with investigating the theft and monitoring piracy websites for unauthorised distribution of the movie, the corporate mentioned.
‘Netflix’ additionally mentioned it had declined to share info from the investigation with Afram’s attorneys ‘given their hostile makes an attempt to extort cash from ‘Netflix’ over this example fairly than work with us in good religion’.
