Two men filed a class action lawsuit against Hollywood studio Universal in the United States on Friday. Conor Woulfe of Maryland and Peter Michael Rosza of San Diego say they watched the trailer Musical comedy “Yesterday” (2019) and discovered one of her favorite actresses: Ana de Armas, known among other things from the last James Bond film “No Time to Die”. Because of her alone, they rented “Yesterday” from Amazon Prime as a video on demand. Only to find out that de Armas was cut out of the final version of the film and therefore doesn’t appear in it at all. Woulfe and Rosza think this is cheating. The trailer is misleading advertising.
Industry magazine Variety quotes from the lawsuit: “Because the trailer promises consumers a film with Ana de Armas, but they don’t get a film with Ana de Armas, the consumers have not received any value for their money.” The outraged plaintiffs each paid $3.99 to rent “Yesterday” online. Now they are demanding “at least five million dollars” in damages to compensate affected customers for their bad spending.
In 2011, a woman complained that she felt cheated by the trailer for “Drive” starring Ryan Gosling
What sounds completely plemplem at first glance, has a history in Hollywood though. The lawsuit is not an isolated case. In 2011, for example, Michigan’s Sarah Deming went to court. She had seen a trailer for the movie “Drive” starring Ryan Gosling and was looking forward to an action movie with lots of car chases based on the pictures in the trailer. But the film turned out to be a bland drama with lots of talk and little action. She then sued the film distributor and the theater where she saw the film for fraud in Oakland District Court. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, but first went through several instances and was seriously discussed there. Which is why the “Yesterday” plaintiffs now have a chance of at least being heard.
Himesh Patel in the comedy “Yesterday” (2019) from which Ana de Armas was edited.
(Photo: Universal)
Why Ana de Armes no longer appears in the finished film, Screenwriter of the film already declared some time ago. Richard Curtis, 65, is a pro at romantic comedies. He invented Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. For “Yesterday” he came up with a special premise. The hero of the film wakes up after an accident in a world where no one else can remember the beatles remembered – and rises to superstardom with her songs. In one scene, he was supposed to meet Ana de Armas on real-life TV host James Corden’s TV show and charm her with his cover of the song “Something.” The scene was shot and the filmmakers really liked it. In test screenings of the film, however, audiences didn’t like it because the hero is actually in love with another woman and they didn’t want to see him so promiscuous. “So we cut the scene for the good of all, although it was a shame,” Curtis told the magazine cinema blend.
Because in Hollywood the first trailers for a film are usually released before the film is finished editing, often even before it’s finished shooting, there are regularly minor and major differences between the trailer and the end product. A court can now decide whether the resulting fan pain in the case of “Yesterday” is so burdensome that it has to be compensated with five million dollars. The Universal film studio, accused of fraud, has not yet commented on the cause.