Ana de Armas, a $3.99 rental, and a $5 million lawsuit: “That was a traumatic cut”
In 2022, a pair of Ana de Armas superfans each paid $3.99 to rent Danny Boyle’s Yesterday, having seen a trailer that included the beautiful Cuban star.
Boyle’s divisive tale of a musician named Jack who is hit by a bus and wakes up to discover he is the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles came out in 2019.
Himesh Patel played the lead role, and Lily James, his love interest, Ellie. De Armas played a famous actor who is introduced to Jack late in the film, making his head turn slightly, before he ultimately decides to pursue his relationship with Ellie. All things considered, it’s not exactly inspiring fare, and The Beatles backdrop simply highlights how rote the film is otherwise.
When Maryland’s Conor Woulfe and California’s Peter Michael Rosza watched the movie, though, hoping to see the star they’d loved in Knives Out, Blade Runner 2049, and No Time to Die, they were horrified to discover she was nowhere. Then, when they found out De Armas’ scene had been left on the cutting room floor, they were incensed, believing Universal Pictures had engaged in false advertising with the trailer that included her smiling face.
In this situation, most people would grumble to themselves and their friends, or compose a scathing social media post to put the movie studio on blast. It’s not a big end-of-the-world deal as movies are living entities that change and reshape right up until release, so something in a trailer might not frustratingly make it into the final cut.
In this particular case, De Armas’ chopped scene wasn’t even due to her performance being subpar, nor was the studio or director raring to remove her from the film. Ultimately, it was a call made after test audiences reacted poorly to the idea of Jack being romantically interested in her character, even if only for a split second, because they were invested in his relationship with Ellie.
“That was a very traumatic cut,” screenwriter and romcom expert Richard Curtis confessed to CinemaBlend, “because she was brilliant in it. I mean, really radiant”. Once the test screening scores came in, though, he knew that one of his favourite scenes had to be taken out behind the woodshed, for the sake of the movie as a whole. It was a bummer, but he handled it like a grown-up.
It’s unknown whether Woulfe and Rosza were aware of these comments from Curtis, which simply point to the realities of modern filmmaking and not a crusade to rid the world of Ana De Armas. However, they must be the heads of her fan club, or a couple of opportunists willing to chance their arm, because they filed a joint federal class action lawsuit against Universal to the tune of $5million. Amazingly, a judge initially agreed with their claim, and the suit proceeded to court.
For the subsequent two years, a war of attrition between Woulfe and Rosza’s lawyers and the army of legal eagles Universal threw at the problem ensued. The studio felt the lawsuit was frivolous and argued that movie trailers are mini pieces of art, not simply advertising tools, so they should be protected by the First Amendment. It also claimed the suit hinged on the preposterous notion that large groups of people paid to see Yesterday, a movie centring the most famous band in history, purely because of one shot of De Armas in one solitary trailer.
At one point, the suit turned so pear-shaped for the duo that they wound up on the hook to pay Universal’s legal fees, with the studio claiming $472,000, before the judge cut that down to a still eye-watering $126,705. In the end, though, the whole thing was settled in April 2024, with both sides agreeing to draw a line under the whole sorry affair by walking away with nothing. What a waste of everyone’s time and money.
