Drive Movie Distributor Sued Over Misleading Trailer

If you’ve ever been so disgusted with a movie that you’ve demanded a refund, you might understand where this litigious Michigan woman is coming from. Feeling that the trailer for the Ryan Gosling-starrer Drive promised a Fast and the Furious-type racing movie, Sarah Deming was so outraged after actually seeing Drive that she is suing the film’s distributor FilmDistrict for its misleading trailer.

According to a report in THR, Deming filed a lawsuit against FilmDistrict because the Drive trailer promoted a movie more like The Fast and the Furious, while the actual movie had very little driving action. And Deming and her legal hounds threw in some allegations of racism against the Jewish faith as well, just to keep things interesting.

[FilmDistrict]…promoted the film Drive as very similar to The Fast and the Furious, or similar, series of movies. Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film… having very little driving in the motion picture. Drive was a motion picture that substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against of the Jewish faith.

But then again, you might feel that suing over a misleading movie trailer is a little excessive. Ok, let’s be real…kind of crazy. Trailers are supposed to grab your attention, and most of us realize that we’re seeing some of the best scenes in the movie, spliced together in a way meant to thrill.

Drive is a stylish, slow-burn thriller directed by Christina Hendricks and Ron Perlman.

Deming is suing for the price of her movie ticket and a halt to the production of future “misleading movie trailers”. Before you ask ‘why bother?’, keep in mind that Deming et al intend to turn this into a class action lawsuit (meaning that other disgruntled movie-goers can share in the settlement). I’m not sure if a cha-ching is called for here, but it is a sad commentary on an increasingly litigious society, and the overly taxed legal system in America, that a lawsuit like this can even be filed.