Movie trailer shows characters deleted from the main film? Court: This is false advertising

The trailer for Danny Boyle's film Yesterday could be seen as false advertising because it includes a character played by Ana de Armas that was cut from the film.

According to Variety, a California court has ruled in favor of Universal Studios in a partial lawsuit against the studio over the studio’s objections, finding that trailers are commercial speech that advertises the content of a film, rather than a form of artistic expression that is fully protected by the First Amendment, as Universal had argued.

In its defense, Universal argued that the lawsuit would "open the floodgates" to lawsuits from moviegoers who feel they were deceived by trailers in more subjective ways. It's not uncommon for trailers to include scenes that were left on the cutting board or were never included in the first place; Variety noted that the famous trailer for Jurassic Park didn't include any footage from the movie. Studios have also made more ambiguous legal claims over trailers, such as a complaint that the Ryan Gosling movie Drive was falsely advertised as having more car chases. The court agreed with Universal to pare down some of the claims in the lawsuit, allowing the California unfair competition law claim to proceed but not the federal Lanham Act claim.

But the ruling endorsed a central argument that trailers are meant to promote movies, comparing them to product ads rather than just brief takes on the film. By that logic, the ruling said, it could be misleading to see a star like de Armas in the trailers if she didn't appear in the film. The fact that she was portrayed as one of the main characters set her apart from a "fleeting background actor" or cameo, supporting fans' claims that their expectations that they would see her in the film were reasonable. The lawsuit is ongoing, so the outcome may not ultimately favor fans. But in a media ecosystem where fans pore over every detail of a trailer, the decision could have a longer-lasting impact.