Judge dismisses lawsuit against Universal over Ana de Armas not appearing in Yesterday

Last year, a pair of disgruntled Ana de Armas fans filed a class-action suit against Universal over the movie Yesterday, saying that they believed Ana de Armas would play a significant role in the film based on her appearance in the trailers only for them to find out that she had been cut out of the movie entirely. Ana de Armas was supposed to play an alternate love interest for Himesh Patel’s character—seemingly the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles—but test audiences apparently didn’t like the idea of him giving up on the main love interest (played by Lily James) so quickly.

The lawsuit was funny, because it seemed like a silly thing to be so upset about (and it coincided with Ana de Armas’ career taking off in the last few years), but also the potential repercussions of it were staggering: If the de Armas fans won, it would’ve set a precedent and other people could start suing movie studios over what happens in trailers. In order to avoid suits like that, the studios would’ve had to completely change how they market their films, especially superhero movies and horror movies (which tend to bank on misdirection in the promotional materials somewhat, like the Avengers: Infinity War trailer that completely altered shots of the climactic battle).

But that’s not going to happen, because The Hollywood Reporter says that a judge has dismissed the lawsuit—but not because of its potentially huge implications for the entertainment business. Instead, it’s because one of the plaintiffs decided to rent the movie a second time. The plaintiff explained that he thought maybe Ana de Armas would show up in a director’s cut, but he had just rented the same version of the movie he saw the first time, so the judge decided that any “injury” he suffered was “self-inflicted” and that he hadn’t actually watched the movie the first time exclusively because he thought Ana de Armas would be in it (which was kind of the basis of the entire argument).

The good news is that marketing for movies will not have to dramatically change just to appease an overly litigious society, but the bad news is that the studios are free to put Ana de Armas in every trailer (at least until someone comes up with a more solid case against it). Now we just have one last question about Yesterday that nobody has sufficiently answered since the movie came out: Was Ed Sheeran in on the joke or not? Does he think it makes sense that, in a world without The Beatles, he would regarded as the most brilliant songwriter of all time, or does he understand that that’s a joke?