Netflix Sued For Losing 'Master Copy' of Unreleased Nicolas Cage Movie (cbsnews.com)
- Reference: 0184781106
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/31/0530256/netflix-sued-for-losing-master-copy-of-unreleased-nicolas-cage-movie
- Source link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netflix-lawsuit-lost-nicolas-cage-movie/
> 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.
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> The complaint notes the movie, entitled " [2]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.
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> 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. "The film's value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work," the complaint states. "By losing control of the film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the film's marketability."
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netflix-lawsuit-lost-nicolas-cage-movie/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortitude_(upcoming_film)
Unencrypted? (Score:3)
This kind of stupidity has me strangely on the side of Netflix.
Why would you put all of your IP on an easily-stolen drive?
Lost a stolen drive? (Score:2)
alleging the streamer lost a stolen drive containing an unencrypted master copy of the unreleased Nicolas Cage film Fortitude...
How could Netflix lose something that was already stolen? Or did production company submit the film on a drive that was previously from someone else? Sounds like a great script idea for new Coen brothers movie.
Encryption is a thing (Score:2)
Netflix should at least encrypt the content so if somebody lifts the drives it's no good outside of the machine it came from. e.g. encrypted partition / files with a key protected with TPM.
Re: (Score:2)
And if the supplier gave it on the hard drive to Netflix, then really they should have encrypted it and given a key to use the drive by some other channel like email
Huh. (Score:2)
Sounds like a good strategy for a studio that expects their big movie to be a box office flop.
Re: (Score:2)
> Sounds like a good strategy for a studio that expects their big movie to be a box office flop.
The Nic Cage financial strategy of funding your lifestyle fuckery with lawsuits, will meet the wall of Hollyweird reality when insurance pays out $30 million to the lawyers and hands Nicky a check for 37 cents and a coupon for two free movie tickets and a large popcorn.
On a related note, $45 million over 7 years is a comparative bargain in Hollywood now. I’m shocked it was that cheap, but that probably didn’t include the $100 million needed for COVID PPP loans funding the great Hollywood Pause.
Re: (Score:2)
A $45 million film with Nicholas Cage will almost certainly be profitable.