Angry Ana de Armas fans will now be able to sue movie studios after Universal lost a bid to dismiss a suit regarding its trailer for 2019′s “Yesterday,” despite claiming First Amendment protection, Variety reports.
The Golden Globe-nominated actress, 34, appeared in ads for the film, in which a floundering musician realises he’s the only one who remembers The Beatles and claims their hits as his own. However, the “Blonde” star’s scenes were ultimately cut from the final cut.
Screenwriter Richard Curtis previously stated that he removed de Armas’ character from the film because she was distracting from the main love interest, played by Lily James.
Though the studio argued that the first amendment should cover its “artistic, expressive” method of conveying a film’s entirety in a matter of minutes, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that “creativity does not outweigh the commercial nature of a trailer,” according to the outlet.
He decided that a trailer is subject to both the California False Advertising Law and the Golden State’s Unfair Competition Law.
“At its core, a trailer is an advertisement designed to sell a movie by providing consumers with a preview of the movie,” wrote Wilson, according to Variety.
Wilson responded to Universal’s concern that any disgruntled fans could sue if “disappointed with whether and how much of any person or scene they saw in the trailer was in the final film.”
According to the outlet, Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, who paid $3.99 to rent the movie on Amazon Prime, are seeking a minimum of $5 million. Because they wanted to be representative of moviegoers, the ruling could eventually serve as a precedent for other trailer-related lawsuits — and affect how and when they’re made — depending on class certification.
