A judge has thrown out a lawsuit accusing Universal of deceitful practices regarding the trailer for the film Yesterday. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the plaintiffs cannot pursue a class action because they did not rely on alleged misrepresentation — specifically, the trailer featuring Ana de Armas, who did not appear in the film — from the studio when deciding to watch the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Last year, Peter Michael Rosza and Conor Woulfe filed a lawsuit alleging that had watched the trailer for Yesterday and believed de Armas had a significant role in the film, but when the rented the movie discovered that she did not appear. Their lawsuit claimed that the trailer was deceitful, and also noted that de Armas appeared in search results as a cast member in the film. However, the court found that Woulfe rented Yesterday for a second time, allegedly believing that de Armas would appear in a director’s cut, with the court finding that the case lacks standing because the “injury is self-inflicted” and that the decision to watch Yesterday was not because of any statement from Universal about de Armas appearing in the film. The plaintiffs had been seeking $5 million in damages after paying $3.99 per rental.
Last fall, Wilson had allowed the case to move forward after Universal’s attempt to have it thrown out on the grounds that the trailer for a movie is an “artistic, expressive work”. De Armas had initially been cast in Yesterday as the love interest for star Himesh Patel, but her scenes were ultimately cut from the final film, though she does appear in the trailer.
“That was a very traumatic cut, because she was brilliant in it. I mean really radiant,” Yesterday filmmaker Richard Curtis previously revealed to Cinema Blend at the time of the movie’s released “And [that] turned out to be the problem. … I think the audience likes the story [about Ellie and Jack] and goes with that, and it works out well. What we’d originally done was had, I don’t want to describe it too much, but had Ana De Armas as a complicating factor when he arrived in L.A. for the first time. And I think the audience did not like the fact that his eyes even strayed. Because then some people would go, ‘Oh, he really doesn’t deserve her. He really doesn’t deserve Lily.’ You know, it’s one of those things where it’s some of our favorite scenes from the film, but we had to cut them for the sake of the whole.”
What Does This Case Dismissal Mean?
The dismissal of the lawsuit is a win for studios in that, had the case gone forward and the plaintiffs won, it could have opened the door for audiences to sue studios for false advertising anytime a trailer or teaser included footage that didn’t make it to the final cut of the film or otherwise didn’t directly represent aspects of the film.
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