Justin Baldoni has continued his legal crusade against his “It Ends With Us” costar Blake Lively. It is reported that he and his production company filed a massive lawsuit against Blake, her husband Ryan Reynolds and her publicist Leslie Sloane, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars.
Justin and his company, Wayfarer Studios, which produced “It Ends With Us,” filed the federal suit ripping Blake and Leslie for their alleged campaign to smear Baldoni and snatch away control of the movie.
As per the docs, reported by TMZ, Blake was “determined to make Baldoni the real-life villain in her story” to deflect from getting publicly trashed as “tone-deaf” during the film’s media tour.
Justin said that she was promoting her haircare and alcohol line while promoting a film about domestic violence.
It has come to light that in the suit, Justin stated the war between himself and Blake started back in May 2023 when they started shooting the movie. He claims she was organizing a “takeover strategy” as they battled for creative control.
Justin also called out Blake’s husband for getting involved in the writing of the script. He claimed Blake had done a rewrite of the film’s critical rooftop scene where the main characters meet, and they had a meeting at Blake and Ryan’s NYC penthouse to discuss it. However, but he now feels it was more of an ambush.
Justin also claimed that Ryan was there from the start, singing the praises of Blake’s rewrite, and then hours later, Blake’s friend, Taylor Swift popped in with her 2 cents, also applauding Blake’s version of the scene.
Justin says he “understood the subtext: he needed to comply with Lively’s direction for the script.”
So, he later texted Blake to say he liked what she’d written and would’ve felt that way even without Ryan input.
He’s included their texts in the suit, and in one, Blake describes her Taylor and Ryan with a “Game of Thrones” reference — “I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons … we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine.”
The outlet also noted that the docs also include emails between the 2 actors from right before filming began, and Justin claims Blake “expressed warm gratitude” for all the work they’d done to prepare. But he also believes it was all a facade so that she could wrestle away control from him.
Some of their early battles were about her character’s wardrobe, she wanted rich and sexy. He also claims Blake hadn’t read the book when they were working on the script, adding … “she even tried to Google the color of her character’s hair rather than pick up the book.”
Justin also lays out his take on the controversial and heated January last year meeting between himself, Blake, Ryan, and several other cast and crew members. He says Blake came armed with a “17-point return to production demand,” as they were preparing for re-shoots on the film. This is the meeting when Ryan allegedly went off on Justin for the alleged sexual harassment that went on during filming.
Justin’s description is pretty colorful, saying “Blake unleashed Reynolds on Baldoni and Wayfarer.” He claims, although he gave in to most of Blake’s demands, she continued to threaten to torpedo the movie unless she got to cut her own version of the film.
Baldoni says his version “scored significantly higher with key audience demographics” but he claims “not surprisingly” Blake reneged on her promise, and insisted Sony release her version … which it did. Justin says he essentially was forced to fire himself from directing the movie.
