I’m late to this.
There appears to be a rift between “It Ends With Us” star Blake Lively and her director/co-star “Justin Baldoni,” who hasn’t done much press for the film. Social media sleuths noticed that the cast wasn’t really taking photos with him either at the film’s recent premiere.
A bunch of media outlets have caught on to the friction and are now wondering what in the hell is happening between these two. It turns out, it’s an old-fashioned editing room battle that we have going on here.
Multiple sources (via TheInSneider) are now saying that there were competing cuts of the film. Apparently, Lively took over Baldoni’s edit despite his cut having scored higher with audiences. How did Lively get away with this? She has a powerful husband, Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool himself, who “basically took over the movie and buddied up to author Colleen Hoover to see that their cut won.”
The end result is that now “[Justin] Baldoni and Blake [Lively] hate each other,” according to Sneider’s sources, adding that Lively has a massive ego and Hollywood can sometimes tend to reward that.
“It’s wild that the cast would shun Justin and not do press with him. It makes no sense because he’s the only one acting professional,” added a second source.
Baldoni has directed two other movies in his career, 2019’s “Five Feet Apart” and 2020’s “Clouds.” He’s best known for his role in the CW series, “Jane the Vigin.” What’s happened to him with this latest project isn’t fun to hear about. He deserved better than being plunged into a stew of egos.
The end result is that “It Ends With Us” has received very mixed reviews from critics. Maybe #ReleaseTheBaldoniCut could become a thing on social media. With that said, and given the hardcore fanbase Hoover’s novel has, the film is still projected to have a very healthy $25M opening weekend.
“It Ends With Us” is produced by Sony and based on the bestselling romance novel by Hoover. Lively produced the film, which co-stars Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, and Kevin McKidd.