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Ana de Armas at the 79th Venice International Film Festival
Photo: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage/Getty Images
Two men from the USA are demanding a large sum from the US film studio Universal because a film trailer was misleading – the actress Ana de Armas was in it, but not in the film.
She was subsequently cut out of this.
Plaintiffs, Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, each paid $3.99 to rent the movie Yesterday on Amazon Prime.
They are seeking $5 million from Universal in a class action lawsuit on behalf of other disappointed fans.
They argue they would not have paid the rental fee if they had known the actress wasn't in the film.
"Damages" in US civil law are more than just damages, they also have a punitive and deterrent character.
A California judge allowed the lawsuit because a trailer qualifies as advertising and is therefore subject to advertising law and unfair competition law.
"At its core, a trailer is an advertisement designed to sell a film by providing consumers with a preview of the film." Universal believes film trailers enjoy broad protections of freedom of speech and expression.
According to the film studio, it is not uncommon for film sequences from the trailer not to be seen in the film.
By allowing this lawsuit, viewers could claim after watching a movie that it didn't live up to expectations from the trailer.
The judge restricted that it was only about scenes that could be seen in the trailer but not in the film.
In the case of the "Yesterday" trailer, it's plausible that viewers would expect de Armas to play a significant role in the film.
It tells the story of a young man who wakes up after a bicycle accident and finds that nobody in the world seems to remember The Beatles.
De Armas plays a potential girlfriend of the protagonist.
Her role was later cut because test audiences didn't like the fact that the lead actor turned away from the female lead and towards de Arma's character.
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