The Hilarious Reason Fans Are Suing Universal
It feels like a lawsuit straight off the page of a movie script. Two different people, one from Maryland and the other from California, have teamed up to recoup at least $5 million from Universal Pictures after claiming misleading marketing, including trailers, were used to trick them into renting and watching the 2019 rom-com musical "Yesterday" on Amazon Prime. Per court documents obtained by Variety, the individuals ultimately claim they were "deceived" and "not provided with any value for their rental or purchase" — and the reason why is epic.
While headline-making lawsuits are as American as apple pie, Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza's federal class-action suit stands out for a number of reasons. For one, similar legal battles that have made headlines have only dealt with movies that were in theaters and not streamed like "Yesterday" was by the two complainants. And in Woulfe and Rosza's case, they may be alleging something that's just as ridiculous as what's been reported, but it's actually much, much easier to be proven on account of the duo's smoking gun: "Knives Out" and "No Time to Die" star Ana de Armas.
Fans are suing because Ana De Armas was cut out of Yesterday
According to Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, the only reason they both coughed up $3.99 to rent Universal's "Yesterday" was because they thought Ana de Armas was going to be in it after seeing her in the trailer and previews, according to the court documents Variety made public. What the two of them didn't know was that de Armas had actually been cut out from the 2019 film entirely.
"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," the Universal lawsuit states. "Such consumers were not provided with any value for their rental or purchase ... [Woulfe and Rosza] suffered injury-in-fact and lost money." Similar suits from years past have typically dealt with the subject matter of certain movies being misleading, like the 2011 case against the distributors of "Drive" by a woman in Michigan who said she was tricked into buying a ticket because she thought the film would be similar to "Fast and the Furious" after watching its trailer (per Entertainment Weekly). That suit was later dismissed.
As people can see in the "Yesterday" previews (via YouTube), de Armas does in fact show up at one point and briefly appears as a possible side love interest for Himesh Patel's Jack Malik character. But producers chose to cut her last minute after her character didn't test well with audiences. "[Viewers] did not like the fact that his eyes even strayed," screenwriter Richard Curtis told CinemaBlend in 2019.