Squiz Shortcuts - Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's legal battle

Your Shortcut to Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s legal battle

The 2024 film It Ends With Us was a huge box office hit, raking in over 10 times its budget. But the film’s success has been overshadowed as its 2 stars have launched lawsuits against each other over claims of abuse, smear campaigns and reputational damage. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll get you across:

• How a behind-the-scenes battle hit the headlines

• The accusations made by Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni

• How Ryan Reynolds, Disney and Taylor Swift are involved

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Okay, what’s this movie about?
Like a lot of movies, it was a book first. It Ends With Us is a novel by US author Colleen Hoover which was published in 2016. It tells the story of Lily Bloom - a florist who enters into a relationship with a neurosurgeon called Ryle - a relationship that turns abusive over the course of the book. 

That sounds like a pretty heavy subject
It’s technically classed as a romance - there’s a third character called Atlas who Lily has a long history with who factors into that - but it does cover some heavy topics. It sold well, and in 2019, the actor and producer Justin Baldoni - who you might know from his role on the TV series Jane the Virgin - bought the movie rights. A couple of years later, the book’s popularity exploded thanks to TikTok and it sold millions more copies - shortly after that, the movie adaptation got going in earnest…

Is that when Blake Lively came on board?
Yep, the former Gossip Girl star was cast in the role of Lily and also took on the role of producer. Baldoni ended up playing the part of Ryle, as well as directing the movie. It was a big hit…

But it sounds like we’re not getting a sequel
Not much chance of that with the same cast, no… Rumours started popping up during the press tour - social media users noticed that Baldoni and Lively never appeared at press events together, and none of the cast members followed Baldoni on Instagram. Soon after, the Hollywood Reporter broke the story of a creative battle between the 2 during the film’s production

That can’t be that unusual in Hollywood, though…
Definitely not, and it wouldn’t typically get as many headlines as this situation did. But there was another story bubbling along at the same time… Lively was copping a lot of heat on social media for what was seen to be insensitive or inappropriate behaviour while promoting the movie.

What sort of stuff was she doing?
Critics pointed to her promotion of her other business interests - like hair care products and her alcohol brand - as being insensitive considering the heavy topics involved in the film. Some old videos of her saying things that were considered inappropriate or rude started to resurface online as well. 

But Baldoni wasn’t copping the same heat?
Not at first… Baldoni was very public about his feminist ideals and care for telling this story about sensitive subjects due to his own personal history - he had a general public image at first as being someone who had been on the losing end of the battle over creative control with a bigger star…. 

Still doesn’t seem like that big a story…
No, it was very much just an entertainment story about two creative people butting heads on a movie set. That was, until December last year…

What happened then?
Just before Christmas, the New York Times published an article called ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Campaign’ which kicked the story into high gear.

Give us the gist…
The article alleges that Baldoni, his lead producer Jamey Heath and his production company ran a smear campaign against Lively with the help of a crisis PR company - including playing a role in boosting the unflattering videos and stories about her on social media at the time the movie was coming out. You might hear the term “astroturfing” in connection with this story - it means making a smear campaign look like it’s grown organically (like grass) but in actual fact it’s manufactured (like astroturf).

Why would they do that over a creative dispute?
Well, that’s the thing - the article alleges that they did this because Lively had made accusations during production of inappropriate conduct - physical and verbal - and they were looking to discredit her reputation in case she tried to make the accusations public. 

Has Baldoni responded?
He sure has… he denied the allegations and then filed his own lawsuit - not against Lively, but against the New York Times for libel. He said the text messages and other communications quoted in the article misrepresented what was going on. Around the same time, his legal team said they’d also be filing a lawsuit against Lively herself - that happened this week… and this new lawsuit - for defamation, extortion and invasion of privacy - has drawn Disney, Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Swift - one of Lively’s best friends - into the discussion…

Tell me how Reynolds is involved…
The lawsuit alleges that Ryan Reynolds, Lively’s husband, and probably best known as the superhero character Deadpool -  was involved in rewrites and creative decisions on the movie. But something that’s got a lot of attention is why Reynolds’ hit Deadpool vs. Wolverine has been dragged into the conflict. 

Okay, didn’t see that coming…
Nor did many people, but there’s a character in it called ‘Nicepool’ - he’s an inversion of the Deadpool character, who is famously foul-mouthed and self-involved - Nicepool is unfailingly polite, has a glorious mane of hair, and he touts his feminist credentials. In short, Baldoni thinks the character is based on him. He wants to subpoena documents and communications from the making of the movie - which is produced by Disney, to prove that’s the case. 

Right, so that’s how Disney is involved. How is Taylor Swift involved?
Her involvement in the legal case comes from a text message from Lively that Baldoni has included in his lawsuit. There’s a rooftop scene early in the film, where Lively and Baldoni’s characters meet. Baldoni’s lawsuit says that Lively had rewritten a version of that scene and at a meeting about it, she surprised him by inviting Reynolds and a ‘mega-celebrity friend’ - which reports say is Swift - to support her, and, he claims, pressure him into including her version of the scene. 

This really has gone to a new level
It sure has… Swift gets a lot of headlines when she does anything, and this is no different. And that brings us up to the current state of play. The various lawsuits are likely to drag on throughout the year and there’ll be more headlines to come - so have your popcorn ready…

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