Michael Sheen film caught up in $105m lawsuit after master copy stolen

Nation.Cymru staff

A new Second World War film starring Michael Sheen has become caught up in a $105 million (£78m) legal battle after an unreleased master copy was stolen from Netflix’s Hollywood offices.

Sheen appears alongside Nicolas Cage, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Goode, Ron Perlman, Alice Eve and Lukas Haas in Fortitude, a wartime espionage drama inspired by the elaborate Allied deception campaign ahead of the D-Day landings.

Details of Sheen’s role in the film have not yet been revealed.

Producer and writer Simon Afram and his company Op-Fortitude have launched legal action against Netflix in California, claiming the theft has severely damaged the film’s commercial value.

An unencrypted master copy of the film was delivered to Netflix’s Los Angeles offices in June while the streaming company was considering acquiring it for distribution.

According to the lawsuit, associate producer Daniel Haido personally delivered a digital cinema package containing the film on June 15.

The production team subsequently made several attempts to retrieve the drive before being told by Netflix on June 25 that a number of drives had been stolen from desks at its offices, including the one containing Fortitude.

Afram’s lawyers argue that the disappearance of the copy could make potential distributors reluctant to acquire the film because of the possibility that it could appear online.

They said it was “not fathomable that a sophisticated buyer would invest tens of millions of dollars” in acquiring and marketing a film while facing the possibility that it could become available to watch for free.

Afram, who says he invested more than $45m (£33.4m) of his own money in the project, claims the film took seven years to complete.

The lawsuit is seeking at least $105m and argues that Netflix should have taken greater precautions to protect the drive.

Dispute

Netflix disputes the claim that it should bear responsibility for the loss.

In a statement, the streaming giant said it “disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards”.

Netflix said it does not own the rights to Fortitude but takes content security seriously and had investigated the theft as well as monitoring piracy sites for any unauthorised appearance of the film.

The company has also accused Afram’s lawyers of making “hostile attempts to extort money from Netflix over this situation” rather than working with it in good faith.

There has been no confirmed public leak of the stolen film.

Deception

Directed by Simon West, whose credits include Con Air and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Fortitude is based on the extraordinary Allied deception operations used to mislead Nazi Germany about the planned invasion of Europe.

The story centres on British Army officers Dudley Clarke and Thomas Argyll “Tar” Robertson, who helped devise elaborate schemes involving fictitious armies, fake military equipment and false intelligence to deceive German commanders about Allied intentions.

Operation Fortitude became a crucial part of preparations for D-Day, helping convince the Germans that the main Allied invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy.

Cage plays Dusko Popov, the real-life double agent who worked for British intelligence and has frequently been cited as one of the inspirations for James Bond.

Filming on Fortitude began in London in September 2025, with the production recreating wartime Britain and the extraordinary military deceptions used by the Allies.

The production also enlisted historian and author Joshua Levine, who previously served as historical consultant on Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

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