A dispute between a producer and Netflix over a missing copy of a World War II spy drama starring Nicolas Cage has now reached the Los Angeles Police Department.<\/p>\n
A law firm representing producer Simon Afram filed a report with the Hollywood Community Police Station, accusing Netflix of losing a drive with a copy of his WWII film, \u201cFortitude,\u201d last month and not providing information on the streamer\u2019s investigation into the issue. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis report is being made on an emergency basis, as there is reason to believe that Netflix, Inc. and its employees are suppressing and\/or spoliating evidence of the theft of an asset with a cost of $45 million to create and a likely sale value of over twice that amount,\u201d according to Afram\u2019s report, which was viewed by The Times. The report, filed July 15, asks for law enforcement to investigate the movie\u2019s theft and \u201cidentify all responsible parties, preserve all relevant evidence, and press charges against the responsible parties.\u201d <\/p>\n
An LAPD spokesman confirmed it is investigating the report.<\/p>\n
Netflix declined to comment on Afram\u2019s report to police. <\/p>\n
Afram and his production company sued Netflix last month<\/a> for at least $105 million in economic damages for the missing drive that contained \u201cFortitude,\u201d a movie starring Cage and Ben Kingsley<\/a>. The film, described as \u201cOcean\u2019s Eleven\u201d meets \u201cInglourious Basterds<\/a>,\u201d is based on Operation Fortitude, an effort during World War II in which double agents set a trap for Adolf Hitler and his armies.<\/p>\n On June 15, Daniel Haido, an associate producer of \u201cFortitude,\u201d dropped off an unencrypted copy of the movie for Netflix to view, according to the lawsuit. On June 25, Netflix informed Haido the drive had been stolen, the lawsuit said. <\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week,\u201d Sean Berney, a director for original film at Netflix, wrote in a June 25 email, according to the lawsuit. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working through this with our security teams to no luck.\u201d<\/p>\n Berney in his email offered to reimburse Afram\u2019s company for the missing drive or create a new digital cinema package, but Afram said the damage was much greater than that, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not fathomable that a sophisticated buyer would invest tens of millions of dollars to acquire the Film \u2014 and tens of millions more to market it \u2014 while facing the constant risk that it could appear online to be viewed widely for free at any time,\u201d Afram\u2019s lawsuit said. <\/p>\n Netflix said in a statement last month that it is conducting an investigation and is offering to monitor piracy sites for any unauthorized distribution or sale of the film. <\/p>\n \u201cNetflix disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards,\u201d the company said in a statement last month. \u201cWhile we do not own the rights to \u2018Fortitude,\u2019 we take content security seriously and have taken extra measures to support the filmmaker and his team.\u201d<\/p>\n The streamer said it has not shared information on its investigation with Afram\u2019s law firm, accusing the firm of \u201chostile attempts to extort money from Netflix over this situation \u2014 including immediately demanding $165 million for the film rather than work with us in good faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Afram added a defamation claim to his lawsuit against Netflix. <\/p>\n \u201cNetflix\u2019s statement that Mr. Afram and his attorneys attempted to extort money from Netflix is entirely false, as are the purported facts on which Netflix based this false statement,\u201d according to his amended lawsuit. <\/p>\n Staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dispute between a producer and Netflix over a missing copy of a World War II spy drama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-440314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}