In mid-June, star-producer Blake Lively traveled to Dallas to attend author Colleen Hoover’s Book Bonanza for a Q&A in the lead-up to the August release It Ends With Us. Lively surprised the 2,000-plus attendees when she announced they could screen a rough cut of the movie adaptation the following night.
The screening of the movie — the first of Hoover’s popular novels to hit the screen — proved to be a stroke of marketing genius for Sony, which bought rights to release the movie from Wayfarer Studios, whose co-founder, Justin Baldoni, both directed and stars in the film.
“Colleen Hoover’s Book Bonanza and her fans sparked the fire that was the beginning of the cultural movement,” says Josh Greenstein, a veteran marketer and president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group.
Absent, however, from the Dallas gathering was Baldoni. The version shown that night was Lively’s preferred rough cut of the movie.
By the time the movie opened Aug. 9, an ugly war had erupted on TikTok and other social media platforms pitting Baldoni and Lively against each other. Many took aim at Lively, despite reports that some cast and crew members, including Lively, felt uncomfortable over Baldoni’s behavior on set.
The rift became undeniable when Baldoni didn’t appear in any cast group photos with Lively, Hoover and the other lead stars at the New York premiere (many had also unfollowed him on Instagram). He later didn’t attend the U.K. premiere, and instead stayed in New York for several appearances on CBS Mornings and the Today show. In recent days, he hired PR crisis communications exec Melissa Nathan.
Lively, meanwhile, has been subject to social media backlash, with some users claiming she did not take the movie’s subject matter of domestic abuse seriously enough, though she spoke about it often on the press tour.
Sony is fully in sync with Lively.
“Blake, Colleen and so many women put so much effort into this remarkable movie, working selflessly from the start to ensure that such an important subject matter was handled with care. Audiences love the movie. Blake’s passion and commitment to advancing the conversation around domestic violence is commendable,” Sony Pictures Entertainment Chair-CEO Tony Vinciquerra told The Hollywood Reporter. “We love working with Blake, and we want to do 12 more movies with her.”
It Ends With Us stars Lively as Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood watching her father abuse her mother to embark on a new life in Boston and fulfill a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.
Sony’s marketing campaign — in staying true to Hoover’s book — conveyed that It Ends With Us isn’t a story of victimhood, but a story of redemption. It traverses falling in love, becoming an entrepreneur, friendship and family, alongside pain and trauma. “Lily is a survivor and a victim, but that doesn’t define her, as she is in charge of her identity and her story. These themes were important to the campaign,” says one source connected to the film’s rollout.
Lively echoed those same sentiments when asked at the New York premiere on Aug. 6 about what she would say to survivors who see this movie and recognize their own traumas. “I think that you’re so much — and not to minimize it — but you are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim. While that is a huge thing, you are a person of multitudes, and what someone has done to you doesn’t define you. You define you.” Hoover has always said the same of her book.
Baldoni has been vocal about why he felt like this story needed to be adapted for the big screen, previously telling THR, “This is one that could actually make a real difference, this could save lives.” He also acknowledged that the topic of domestic violence needed to be treated with care in the adaptation.
The female-fueled pic exceeded all expectations in debuting to $50 million last weekend at the North American box office to almost catch up with the third-weekend earnings of Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds.
On Monday and Tuesday, It Ends With Us it overtook Deadpool to top the domestic box office charts for a five-day domestic tally of $64 million, a tidy sum for a film that cost $25 million to produce. Overseas, it’s opened to north of $30 million, meaning it’s likely already crossed the $100 million mark.
Sources have told THR that there was a fracture between Baldoni and Lively in the postproduction stage, wherein two different cuts of the movie emerged. Lively commissioned a cut of the movie from editor Shane Reid, who was an editor on Deadpool & Wolverine, according to multiple sources.
On Friday of the movie’s opening, Baldoni was asked if he would consider directing the book adaptation of Hoover’s sequel It Starts With Us. He suggested that Lively might be best suited for the job.
Carly Thomas contributed to the story.