Movie trailers as we know it might soon be a thing of the past.
Angry Ana de Armas fans will now be able to sue movie studios after Universal lost a bid to toss out a suit regarding its trailer for 2019′s “Yesterday,” despite claiming First Amendment protection, Variety reports.
The Golden Globe-nominated actress, 34, was featured in ads for the film, in which a floundering musician realizes he’s the only person who remembers The Beatles and claims their hits as his own. However, the “Blonde” star’s scenes were ultimately scrapped from its final cut.
Screenwriter Richard Curtis previously said he cut de Armas’ character from the film because she was distracting from the main love interest, brought to life by Lily James.
Though the studio argued the first amendment should cover its “artistic, expressive” means of conveying a film’s entirety in a matter of minutes, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson found “creativity does not outweigh the commercial nature of a trailer,” according to Variety.
A trailer, he decided, is subject to the California False Advertising Law as well as the Golden State’s Unfair Competition Law.
“At its core, a trailer is an advertisement designed to sell a movie by providing consumers with a preview of the movie,” wrote Wilson, according to the outlet.
Noting false advertising is only in play when a “significant portion” of “reasonable consumers” could be misled, Wilson countered Universal’s concern that any disgruntled fans could sue if “disappointed with whether and how much of any person or scene they saw in the trailer was in the final film.”
Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, both of whom paid $3.99 to rent the movie on Amazon Prime, are seeking a minimum of $5 million, according to the outlet. As they wanted to be representative of moviegoers, the ruling could ultimately serve as a precedent for other suits concerning trailers — and affect how and when they’re made — depending on class certification.
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