MICHAEL SHEEN: Port Talbot star’s new war film caught up in $105m Netflix lawsuit

A film featuring Michael Sheen has ended up at the centre of a $105m lawsuit against Netflix, after its producers say the master copy they handed over was stolen from an office desk.

Sheen, from Port Talbot, is part of a large ensemble in Fortitude, a second world war espionage thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Sir Ben Kingsley.

His role in the film has never been disclosed, and he is not a party to the case.

The claim was filed in California federal court on 30 July by the film’s writer and producer Simon Afram and his company Op-Fortitude, and seeks at least $105m in damages.

A drive left on a desk

According to the lawsuit, an associate producer hand-delivered a digital cinema package containing the film to Netflix’s Los Angeles office on 15 June, while the streamer was considering buying the distribution rights.

The producers say the copy was unencrypted, that they told Netflix so, and that they asked for the files to be deleted once the film had been screened internally.

When they tried to arrange collection, they say Netflix went unresponsive.

On 25 June, an email from Netflix’s head of film acquisitions Sean Berney told them the drive had gone. “This is a first for us,” he wrote, according to the filing, adding that security teams had been working on it “to no luck” and that piracy teams were on high alert.

The lawsuit says Netflix later declined a request to involve the Los Angeles Police Department after the film-makers had filed their own report.

‘The resulting damage is profound’

Afram says he put more than $45m of his own money into the film and spent seven years making it.

The lawsuit argues the theft has wrecked the film’s saleability, because any buyer would now have to be told an unencrypted copy is unaccounted for, and that no sophisticated buyer would spend tens of millions on a film that might turn up online for free.

The filing says the international release strategy and awards campaign have been put on hold. The film’s worldwide rights are still available and the sales process is continuing.

“The resulting damage to plaintiffs is profound,” the filing states.

In a statement, Afram said the film “was never mine alone” and belonged to the cast, whose performances “deserve to be seen and recognised”.

Netflix disputes it

Netflix rejects the idea that the loss is its responsibility. A spokesperson said the company “disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards”.

The streamer said it does not own the rights to Fortitude but takes content security seriously, has investigated the theft, and offered to monitor piracy sites for any unauthorised copy.

It also said Afram’s law firm demanded $165m for the film before suing, which it described as a hostile attempt to extort money rather than working in good faith, and said this was why it stopped sharing details of its investigation.

Netflix says the other stolen drives turned out to be empty. There has been no confirmed leak of the film.

The film itself

Fortitude takes its name from the real Allied deception campaign that convinced Nazi commanders the D-Day landings would come at Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy, using fictitious armies, inflatable decoy equipment and double agents.

It follows the British officers Dudley Clarke and Thomas Argyll “Tar” Robertson, who devised the schemes. Filming began in London in September last year under director Simon West, whose credits include Con Air and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

This is not the project’s first trip through the courts. Afram previously sued Martin Scorsese, who had been attached to it, claiming he took $500,000 to help develop the film and did not deliver. Scorsese’s lawyers dismissed the claim and it was later settled.

Fortitude still has no release date.

A busy summer for Port Talbot

The case lands during a good run for the town Sheen comes from. He voices Dylan Thomas’s own words in a free exhibition running at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.

Port Talbot is meanwhile shortlisted for the first UK Town of Culture, and Sir Anthony Hopkins has signed a record deal for an album drawn from his Margam childhood.