In Hollywood, where one gets carried away with what’s displayed on screen, the real off screen drama can be just as big a draw. In the midst of a storm the legal battles around the making of the 2024 romantic drama It Ends With Us have now been joined.
The story, based on a bestselling novel, of love and domestic violence, is, of course, an adaptation. Seeing a film directed by and starring Justin Baldoni alongside Blake Lively was something that was supposed to achieve important conversations while making for a heartfelt story.
The production was fraught with tension, though instead of noble themes. Creative differences between the leading stars became ever more apparent on the set, sources indicate.
The promotional campaign for the movie set tongues wagging about public perception within the film’s own promotional campaign. Social media debates erupted after critics observed that Lively’s marketing of the film didn’t seem to align with the delicate subject matter, and circulated on Twitter.
The responsibility of the actors to also promote films that touch upon such serious societal issues brought about fans and critics to discuss it. As the voice grew louder, I couldn’t really tell if these were personal matters or professional ones.
According to Lively, it got worse in December 2024, when he filed a suit against Baldoni. But she claimed that he s3xually harassed her, and that he helped create a hostile work atmosphere while making the film.
Her legal filing also alleged Baldoni used manipulative tactics to portray her in a bad light. The lawsuit shone a light on claims of bad behavior on set and began the conversation about the unequal power dynamics in Hollywood.
And then the legal proceedings took a sharper turn when Baldoni, in denying the allegations, insisted he sobbed himself to death after testing positive for cocaine.
He then filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, saying it had worked with Lively to ruin his reputation.
Baldoni’s team said that the newspaper’s reporting was based on unsubstantiated claims and that they had damaged him professionally and personally. It began a hugely publicised legal saga for fans and media alike.
January 2025 saw these developments however, compounding an already tense situation into a new chapter. More lawsuits looked likely, and the effect on the film’s reception also looked far from certain.
This shocked the world then. Two months later, on March 16, 2025, Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios filed a £320 million lawsuit against Lively, Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and his publicist Leslie Sloane.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York Thursday, accuses Lively and Reynolds of organizing a campaign to defame Baldoni. It also claims that they had tried to grab control of the production of the film.
According to the legal filing, Lively and her team planted disinformation with the media to portray Baldoni as the ‘real life villain.’ The actions were ‘duplicitous and manipulative,’ said Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s attorney.
“This is a battle she cannot win, and she will most certainly regret,” Freedman said. ‘Justin and his team have nothing to hide, and the evidence speaks for itself,’ it added.”
Sloane, publicist for the Beckhams and founder of Vision PR, is also named in the suit along with her firm for spreading misinformation. Baldoni’s legal team said Wednesday they had ‘a lot of emails and text messages’ to back their case, including those between Blaney and Gucci.
Lively and her team, Freedman said, could have acted with severe misguidance or intentional malice. He said they looked for issues to exploit in exploiting Lively’s reputation, not Baldoni’s.
It Ends With Us fans and Hollywood have been left stunned by the explosive lawsuit. The entertainment world is left wrestling with ethics, accountability and the power plays in filmmaking as the legal drama heads towards a close.
None of Lively, Reynolds and Sloane’s representatives have publicly responded. The case holds the promise of changing the narrative surrounding one of Hollywood’s most talked about projects: movies that cost millions to make and could damage reputations.
Feature Image Credit: (Netflix)