Following complaints from viewers that a movie trailer was deceptive, a US judge has decided that the movie studio Universal can be sued for fraudulent advertising.
After renting the 2019 movie Yesterday, two Ana de Armas admirers filed a lawsuit in January.
The two were dismayed to learn that the actress, who appeared in the teaser, had been dropped from the finished product.
Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, the claimants, each spent $3.99 (£3.31) to rent Yesterday on Amazon Prime.
Woulfe and Rosza have filed a class action lawsuit against Universal on behalf of other disgruntled fans, seeking at least $5 million (£4.1 million) from the company.
The two claimed that if they had realized the actress wasn’t in the movie, they wouldn’t have paid to rent it.
Stephen Wilson, a US district judge in California, decided that their legal action may proceed.
The movie’s production company, Universal, fought to have the lawsuit dismissed, claiming that the First Amendment, which safeguards press freedom and free expression, gives film trailers broad protection.
The legal representatives for the studio contended that a trailer should be regarded as “non-commercial” communication since it is a “artistic, expressive work” that tells a three-minute story communicating the concept of the film.
The California False Advertising Law and the state’s Unfair Competition Law both apply to trailers, according to the judge, who rejected that defense and declared it to be commercial speech.
In his ruling, Wilson stated that while “Universal is correct that trailers entail some ingenuity and editorial discretion, this originality does not override the commercial aspect of a trailer.”
A movie trailer is fundamentally an advertisement created to promote a film by giving viewers a sneak peek.
The attorneys for Universal asserted in their filing on the subject that it is common for movie trailers to have snippets that do not appear in the final product.
They made reference to Jurassic Park, another movie from Universal, whose trailer they claimed was made entirely of footage that wasn’t in the actual picture.
Additionally, Universal stated that labeling trailers as “commercial communication” could lead to an increase in litigation from displeased moviegoers who might assert subjectively that a movie did not live up to the expectations set forth in the trailer.
Wilson addressed this issue by claiming that the law against false advertising only applies when a “significant fraction” of “reasonable consumers” could be misled.
According to the judge, the court’s ruling only applies to situations in which a character or scene from the trailer is absent from the final product.
He claimed that audiences may reasonably assume from the Yesterday teaser that de Armas will play a key part in the movie.
It was originally planned for De Armas, a Cuban-Spanish actress who starred in Knives Out, to play the love interest for Himesh Patel’s character.
She was supposed to have met Patel’s character while they were filming James Corden’s talk show, and Patel would have serenaded her with the Beatles song Something. The trailer included some of the video from these scenes.
De Armas was removed from the film, according to screenwriter Richard Curtis, because viewers did not enjoy the idea of Dev Patel’s character deviating from his main love interest, Lily James.
He described the decision as “extremely distressing” in 2019 because de Armas was “excellent” in the part.
In the movie Yesterday, a young guy wakes up following a bicycle accident to discover that no one on earth seems to remember The Beatles.
He goes on to become rich and famous by singing the songs himself, but when he is given credit for writing them, he is forced to consider his moral obligations.
The action brought by Woulfe and Rosza will now move on to discovery and a motion for class certification.
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