Universal Pictures was accused of deceptive advertising for using Ana de Armas footage in the trailer of the movie Yesterday, although the character of de Armas was edited out of the actual film. On 21st January a class action lawsuit was filed in a California court by Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, complaining that they both spent $3.99 each to watch the movie on Amazon.
Yesterday features Himesh Patel and Lily James, narrating the story of a failed singer-songwriter, Jack who hits his head after a mysterious blackout and wakes up to a world that is not aware of The Beatles. Jack takes the golden ticket to be popular as he always wanted to adopt The Beatles’ songs and took all the credit by himself. In the clip of the 2019 trailer of the film Yesterday Jack is seen alongside de Armas, although the actress does not have any dialogue in that particular brief of the trailer.
Plaintiffs Woulfa and Rosza claimed that they were tricked into renting the movie by Universal Pictures, they would not rent the film if they knew Armas was not in the actual movie. They continued their complaint against the producer and the makers of the film, saying, ‘used Ms. De Armas’s fame, radiance and brilliance to promote the film by including her scenes in the movie trailers advertising Yesterday’. Woulfe also mentioned that he rented the movie on Google Play by noticing the appearance of Armas’s name in the casting list as a member of the movie but felt cheated when the actress did not appear.
Danny Boyle’s movie gathered around $155m at the global box office, The Beatles-themed film starred Himesh Patel, Lily James, and Ed Sheeran has created a buzz among the Hollywood fans. Richard Curtis, the screenwriter unveiled the reason behind the character of Armas disappearing in the film as the test audience did not adhere to the scene where the character James diverged from his primary love interest. He complimented Armas for being ‘brilliant’ in that role and also confessed that it had been a ‘very traumatic cut’.
The pair filed their complaint and sought $5m from Universal Pictures in the scenario on behalf of the disappointed fan. But Judge Stephen Wilson rejected the lawsuit saying, ‘version of Yesterday they accessed on Google Play would be a different version of the movie’.
However, the legal action which was brought by Armas’s fans Woulfa and Rosza has been thrown out by a US judge, calling their complaints ‘Self-inflected’. The lawyers of Universal Pictures earlier argued that the trailer conveys a story of three minutes carrying the basic theme of the film and mentioned the trailer as an ‘artistic, expressive work’. They also used the movie Jurassic Park as an example of cutting scenes in the film after using them in the trailer first. The Judge threw out the case and stated that the plaintiffs themselves did not watch the movie Yesterday as the Universal states that Ana de Armas did appear in the actual film.
