Netflix is being sued for $105 million over the theft of a hard drive holding the unreleased Nicolas Cage film Fortitude, according to The Guardian (The Guardian, 30 July 2026).

Fortitude is a World War II spy thriller set in London, directed by Simon West — the film-maker behind Con Air and The Expendables 2 — with a reported budget of $45 million. Cage stars alongside Matthew Goode, Michael Sheen, and Ben Kingsley. The screenplay is by Simon Afram, who says he spent seven years developing the project.

The chain of events began late in 2025, when Netflix expressed interest in promotional materials for the film. In June 2026, the production delivered a digital copy to Netflix's Los Angeles office for an internal screening. At some point after that delivery, a hard drive containing the film was stolen from the Netflix premises. The lawsuit claims Netflix has not confirmed whether a police report was initially filed, and says the company declined a request from the film-makers to bring in the Los Angeles Police Department.

Netflix is pushing back. A spokesperson said the company does not bear the risk of loss for a film delivered without proper industry-standard safeguards, and stated that Netflix does not own the rights to Fortitude (The Guardian, 30 July 2026). The suit, in other words, turns on whether Netflix owed a duty of care to material it was evaluating but had not acquired.

The $105 million figure dwarfs the film's $45 million budget, suggesting the claim reaches beyond production cost to cover potential lost deals and future revenue — the kind of money that flows from distribution windows and territorial pre-sales, the lifeblood of an independent production's financial model.

Sean Berney, head of Netflix film acquisitions, is named in the reporting as the executive involved in the streamer's interest in the project. The Guardian's account does not identify the specific production company filing suit, the law firm representing them, or the court where the case was lodged.

Fortitude has a tangled history. Martin Scorsese was previously attached to the film but became the subject of a separate lawsuit alleging he accepted $500,000 to help develop the project and failed to do so. That case was later settled (The Guardian, 30 July 2026).

For now, the film sits in limbo — completed enough to screen, but trapped in a dispute over how a hard drive walked out of one of the most secure offices in the entertainment industry.