Ana de Armas: What Happened to Her Fans' Lawsuit Over "Yesterday"?

August 31, 2023

More than a year after two fans of Ana de Arma filed a lawsuit over her "deceptive" appearance in the film "Yesterday", the judge overseeing the case issued his verdict this week.

Federal district judge Stephen Wilson ultimately rejected the legal complaint, despite the fact that last December he appeared to be more aligned with the plaintiffs' position than with Universal's countersuit.

At that time, Wilson stated that movie trailers indeed involve "certain creativity and editorial discretion" and are "advertisements designed to sell a movie by offering viewers a preview of it".

However, he has now reversed course and ruled against the arguments of the plaintiffs, Conor Woulfe from Maryland and Peter Michael Rosza from San Diego, California, characterizing their actions as "self-inflicted".

Ana de Armas did indeed appear in the trailer for "Yesterday", released in 2019, for which the plaintiffs claimed to have paid $3.99 to rent. After watching the film and noticing Armas's absence from the final version, they decided to accuse Universal Pictures of false advertising.

For his part, the film's screenwriter Richard Curtis explained that the removal of the Cuban actress was due to public disapproval that the main character was diverting his primary romantic interest.

According to Curtis, the cut was a "very traumatic" process, mainly because of De Armas's outstanding performance. However, this was not sufficient reason for the plaintiffs to drop their arguments, maintaining that had they known the Cuban actress would not appear, they would not have rented the film.

The American couple was seeking compensation of at least $5 million from Universal, supporting their lawsuit on the grounds that Universal took advantage of Ana de Armas's fame to promote "Yesterday" before its release.

The plaintiffs had previously watched the film on Amazon Prime and decided to watch it a second time on Google Play, because the actress from the island was still listed as part of the cast on that platform.

Despite all of this, the judge ruled that the arguments "lacked legitimacy", based on the grounds that the damage was self-inflicted and that there was no evidence suggesting that the Google Play version of "Yesterday" would be different from the one they had watched on Amazon Prime.

Universal's attorneys had also defended the idea that a trailer is an artistic and expressive work that tells a three-minute story, conveying the general theme of the film.

And although they stated that it was not common for movie trailers to include scenes that would later not be included in the final cut, they cited examples such as the popular "Jurassic Park" where this situation occurred.