A whole heckuva lot has happened in the last year-and-a-half, so you could be forgiven for forgetting a truly Mad Libs piece of news from early 2022: People were suing the distributors of that Beatles film Yesterday because it didn’t have any Ana de Armas. Granted, the plaintiffs did have a case: The actress was featured, albeit briefly, in the film’s trailer. Alas, her scenes wound up being cut. Now these Ana de Armas fans have some more bad news.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson tossed the case on Monday. Wilson’s said the plaintiffs couldn’t blame Universal, who distributed the film worldwide, for them renting the film mistakenly — which one of them did twice:
But the court found that Woulfe, who rented the movie a second time on Google Play under the belief that de Armas could appear in a director’s cut, “lacks standing” to bring a suit because his “injury is self-inflicted.” Wilson concluded Woulfe didn’t watch Yesterday because of statements from Universal that de Armas appears in the movie. He also found that there was no reason to believe that the “version of Yesterday they accessed on Google Play would be a different version of the movie” than the one they watched the first time.
De Armas was originally cast as a love interest for the lead character, played by Himesh Patel, a man who wakes up one day to find that no one in the world has ever heard of The Beatles nor any of their beloved songs. The plaintiffs were seeking $5 million in damages after paying $3.99 per rental.
Has the case gone forward — and had the plaintiffs won — it would have opened the flood gates for people to sue movie studios for false advertising in trailers. Perhaps a trailer that made a comedy seem funnier than it is could have led to a lawsuit. But for now, the people who cut movie ads can sleep better tonight.
(Via THR)