Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni’s beef has affected the plans for an ‘IEWU’ sequel

So far, I’ve yet to hear a believable explanation for why Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni fell out so swiftly during filming or postproduction for It Ends With Us. Blake’s people seemed to push a narrative that Justin was mean/rude and that he “body-shamed” Blake by asking her trainer how much she weighed. Justin’s response was that he has a bad back and he needed to lift Blake in a scene without back spasms. There’s also been a lot of talk of how Blake’s husband Ryan Reynolds put his stink all over IEWU. Blake told reporters that Ryan rewrote a key scene, and Blake also brought in her own editor (an editor close to Ryan) to create her own cut of IEWU. Is this the root of Blake and Justin’s falling out? That seems much more possible to me. It’s also possible that Blake didn’t agree with Justin’s more sensitive approach to promoting a movie about domestic violence, mostly because Blake wanted the film’s promotion to help her liquor and haircare lines. Well, Variety has a new piece about how the IEWU sequel might not get made because of Blake and Justin’s beef, plus there’s more gossip about the falling out. Ryan Reynolds catches a stray as well – it’s very possible that Ryan is a WGA scab.

The money: “It Ends With Us” cost $25 million to produce and is expected to net at least $25 million to $30 million in profits for both Sony (which distributed the film) and director-star Justin Baldoni‘s Wayfarer Studios (which co-financed it with TSG Entertainment). Another source familiar with the deal-making puts that figure at double. Those margins don’t include proceeds for cinemas or box office bonuses for star Blake Lively and Baldoni.

Where’s the announcement on a sequel? A sequel to the novel, “It Starts With Us,” already exists, so there would be no need to stretch the source material to exploit a hit, à la “Big Little Lies.”…Hollywood players typically capitalize on positive box office headlines by fast-tracking the announcement of another installment. But an apparent feud between Lively and Baldoni that has spilled out into the public eye has left any sequel plans looking precarious. “This is uncharted territory, and nobody has any idea of what a sequel could look like,” says a source familiar with the situation. “There’s probably no world where these two will work together again.”

Why did Baldoni & Lively clash in the first place? There’s been speculation that Lively and Baldoni clashed over the final cut of the movie, with Lively’s preferred version as the one that reportedly made it to the big screen. Some screenwriters have said it was odd that Lively admitted during a red carpet interview that her husband Ryan Reynolds wrote a key scene in the final cut of the film. Sources say that came as news to Baldoni, who thought the scene had been ad libbed by Lively. The WGA did not respond to a request for comment about whether Reynolds’ work is a guild violation that could spark a credits issue. Though movies can have uncredited writers, rarely would the director be unaware of it.

Ryan Reynolds is a scab? Reynolds’ involvement raises a second WGA issue. The film began production on May 5, 2023 — three days after the start of last summer’s WGA strike. Reynolds, who received a screenwriter credit on “Deadpool 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine,” is a WGA member and would have been barred from contributing to the screenplay between May 2 and Sept. 27, 2023. Writers picketed the New Jersey set, and production was paused in late June 2023 before the SAG-AFTRA strike commenced on July 14. (A source close to Reynolds says he took a pass on the film’s rooftop scene in April 2023.)

The bad blood is real: Neither Baldoni or Lively have addressed the chatter publicly, but multiple sources confirm to Variety that the bad blood between the two is very real and the relationship may not be salvageable. Yet none of those sources could articulate any legitimate transgressions from either party.

Baldoni owns the rights: The rift is complicated by the fact that Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios holds the cinematic rights to both “It Ends With Us” and “It Starts With Us” after acquiring them in 2019 from Hoover. The author told Variety that she rejected several offers before agreeing to team with Baldoni on the big-screen adaptation. “I felt like he understood the book and he understood the importance of people needing to see it on screen,” Hoover said.

[From Variety]

“Yet none of those sources could articulate any legitimate transgressions from either party.” This is what I don’t get. Like, there are legitimate issues raised and I can absolutely see why Blake and Justin would have fought or had disagreements over this or that. But from where I sit, it feels like Justin has more of a right to feel like his leading lady f–ked him over constantly, from getting her husband to rewrite a scene (leading to WGA/union/strike issues) to creating her own studio-supported cut of HIS film to lying about his actions towards her in general. Plus, Justin has every right to be upset that Blake used IEWU’s promotion to shill her haircare and liquor lines! And yet the narrative is “Blake is super-mad at Justin, for reasons!” It appears, to me, that Justin has tried to keep it professional and above-board throughout all of Blake’s BS. Anyway, I hope Justin makes them pay him a lot of money to give up the rights to the sequel, because that’s the only way the sequel will get made.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.