A Couple Of Ana de Armas Superfans Are Suing Universal For $5 Million For Putting Her In The Trailer For "Yesterday" Before Removing Her From The Actual Movie
Variety- Two fans filed a federal class action lawsuit on Friday alleging they were duped into renting the 2019 film “Yesterday” because Ana de Armas appeared in the trailer. Conor Woulfe, 38, of Maryland, and Peter Michael Rosza, 44, of San Diego County, Calif., say they each paid $3.99 to rent the movie on Amazon Prime, only to discover that de Armas was removed from the final cut of the film.
The suit accuses Universal of engaging in deceptive marketing, and seeks to recoup at least $5 million on behalf of affected consumers. “Because consumers were promised a movie with Ana De Armas by the trailer for ‘Yesterday,’ but did not receive a movie with any appearance of Ana de Armas at all, such consumers were not provided with any value for their rental or purchase,” the lawsuit states.
De Armas was to appear as Roxane, a love interest who is introduced to Malik on the set of James Corden’s talk show. Malik was to serenade her with a rendition of George Harrison’s song “Something.” But the scenes with de Armas’ character were removed. Richard Curtis, the screenwriter, explained to Cinema Blend that audiences did not like the idea of Malik straying from his primary love interest in the film, portrayed by Lily James.
I mean this is the most open and shut case in the history of the planet, right? It's been years since I went to law school, but Universal putting an A-List celebrity in the trailer for their movie then just removing her is the definition of false advertising, right? Because unless my eyes are lying, that right there is Ana de Armas.
Putting Ana in your trailer then ripping her out of the final cut would be like me blogging that I went to law school even though I never dreamt of going because I knew I didn't have the brains or the drive for it the moment I found out what law school was like.
:rereads previous paragraph:
Shit.
Anywayyyyy, based on what I've seen on the internet, pissing off superfans that have enough time and obsession with another human to file a lawsuit because that human wasn't in a movie is not worth the headaches that will come out of it. Universal pisses $5 million before it brushes its teeth in the morning. Forking over that money for what was at best an honest mistake and at worst willfully deceiving the public is the easiest thing they could do to keep the angry mob off their back. If a movie studio puts Ana de Armas in a trailer, people are going to expect to see her on screen just like if a Barstool blogger puts Ana de Armas as the thumbnail of their blog, people are going to expect to see a bunch of pictures of her.
See, how hard was that Universal? You shouldn't have to check a movie's IMDB page before watching it to make sure all the stars you thought were in it are actually in it. We live in a society! If Universal can do this, what's stopping Marvel from putting Wolverine in the trailer for the upcoming Dr. Strange movie then cutting him from the final cut because "the audience test scores didn't think he fit".
Speaking of which, I may not have seen "Yesterday" even though I was interested in checking it out before I forgot. But I don't care what the audience thought about Malik straying from his love interest in the film. If someone was able to convince the world that he was the creator of all The Beatles music, he would 1000000% mingle with a fictional Ana de Armas. That's just rock and roll.
P.S. Upon further review, the only people that should be entitled to this $5 million lawsuit are people that actually went to the movie theater to see Ana de Armas instead of renting it on Amazon Prime. There is a huuuuuuge difference between driving to the theater, spending like $50 on a ticket with concessions, then realizing you were hoodwinked vs.spending $4 to sit on your couch.