Justin Baldoni sues Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds as bitter It Ends With Us legal battle steps up
After rumours of discord behind the scenes last year, both Blake Lively and her It Ends With Us director and co-star have lodged lawsuits against each other in recent weeks.
Friday 17 January 2025 16:18, UK
It Ends With Us director and actor Justin Baldoni is suing his co-star Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, in the latest step in a bitter legal battle surrounding the film.
Baldoni is seeking at least $400m (£326m) for damages including lost future income.
The lawsuit - from Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios - has been filed in a New York court.
It alleges Lively and Reynolds hijacked both the production and marketing of It Ends With Us, and manipulated media to smear Baldoni and others on the production with false allegations of harassment.
The lawsuit says: "This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio.
"Then, when Lively and Reynolds' efforts failed to win them the acclaim they believed they so richly deserved, they turned their fury on their chosen scapegoat."
It also claims Baldoni and the studio did not want to take legal action, but that Lively "has unequivocally left them with no choice, not only to set the record straight […] but also to put the spotlight on the parts of Hollywood that they have dedicated their careers to being the antithesis of".
Publicist Leslie Sloane is also named as a defendant.
Responding to the filing, Lively's lawyers, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, called Baldoni's new lawsuit "another chapter in the abuser playbook".
Their statement released on Thursday said: "This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender."
The legal battle surrounding the film began just before Christmas, when Lively filed a legal complaint alleging Baldoni had sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us.
A lawyer representing Baldoni, the studio and its representatives said at the time that the claims were "completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious".
The Gossip Girl actress followed the complaint with a lawsuit against Baldoni and his studio, suing them for harassment.
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She also claimed they had launched a "multi-tiered plan" to damage her reputation after she came forward to speak about her treatment on set.
That lawsuit came on the same day Baldoni sued the New York Times for libel, claiming the paper worked with his co-star to smear him in their in-depth piece on her initial legal complaint.
A spokesman for Justin Baldoni, Bryan Freedman, claimed the new lawsuit was "based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team's duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media".
"It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret," he said.
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It Ends With Us, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover's hit novel, was released in cinemas last August.
Fans began speculating about a possible behind-the-scenes rift after noticing Lively did not follow her co-star on social media in the weeks leading up to the film's release.
While promoting the movie, Baldoni did not do any interviews alongside Lively - who instead took centre stage with husband Reynolds, who was on the press circuit for Deadpool & Wolverine at the same time.