Simon Afram Productions has just unveiled the trailer for Fortitude, which tells the unbelievable true story of Britain’s attempt to deceive Hitler with a fake army. The new World War II film comes from screenwriter Simon Afram and Simon West, director of Con Air and The Expendables 2, helms the movie.
Fortitude sports an all-star cast, which includes Matthew Goode, Ed Skrein, Jordi Mollà, Alice Eve, Art Malik, Lukas Haas, Adrian Topol, Emilio Sakraya, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Paul Anderson, with Ben Kingsley, with Michael Sheen and Nicolas Cage.
Cage, here, seems to be playing the “real-life” inspiration for James Bond as he composes himself as a suave, tux-wearing, ladies’ man who rattles off one-liners and orders the signature shaken, but not stirred Vodka Martini. Ian Fleming is even included in the story and there’s a cheeky nod to “007” at the end of the trailer.
The official synopsis reads,
“FORTITUDE is based on an incredible true story and follows the fearless and unpredictable spy-soldiers Dudley Clarke (Ed Skrein) and Thomas Argyll ‘TAR’ Robertson (Matthew Goode), as they devise the biggest deception mission ever mounted. With the support of Winston Churchill (Michael Sheen), Ian Fleming (Art Malik) and an extraordinary network of double agents, among them Dusko Popov (Nicolas Cage), the real-life spy who inspired the James Bond novels, Juan Pujol (Jordi Mollà), a Spanish chicken farmer, and Nancy Armstrong (Alice Eve), a top British Intelligence agent, they create a spectacular master plan using a fictitious army, fake tanks, aircraft and ships, actors and false radio messages to fool Hitler’s Nazi Army in the build-up to D-Day. Operation FORTITUDE decisively changed the course of World War II and paved the way for a free world.”
Fortitude was recently the subject to legal issues as the movie was stolen from the offices of Netflix. Writer-producer Simon Afram and his company, Op-Fortitude, claim Netflix potentially jeopardized the movie’s distribution prospects by failing to safeguard the stolen copy. They are now seeking damages of at least $105 million. According to the complaint, Netflix had previously expressed interest in purchasing Fortitude and later requested that a digital cinema package (DCP) be delivered to its offices so it could test the movie.
On June 15, a producer hand-delivered a drive containing Fortitude to Netflix and allegedly told the company that the DCP was unencrypted and that the files should be deleted after the screening. Ten days later, a Netflix executive explained that the drive had been stolen.
In a June 25 email, Sean Berney, Netflix’s head of film acquisitions, wrote, “This is a first for us. Unfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week. We’ve been working through this with our security teams to no luck. Our piracy teams are on high alert with the breach and will monitor.“