This is a money grab and an attempt to rehabilitate her image. She has been getting slammed for more than a month for her behavior during this film and leading up to its release. She basically did a hostile takeover of the film midway. The actor/director she is maligning is by all accounts a really good person who took the high road and let her take over the film ( with her husband doing rewrites ).
This kills two birds namely getting her a bigger payday and making her not to be a victim instead of a manipulative oppressor. There have been tons of people coming forward who have worked with her previously who have all come forward detailing similar experiences. It’s a shame because Ryan Reynolds seems like a genuinely cool person. Oh well , Hollywood sucks!
It is worth noting that Baldoni owned the rights to the film and its sequel. He was starring in it and directing it. He has also never had a single negative thing said about him before this. Lively on the other hand is pretty much despised in the industry. Many big name actor/actresses who has worked with her, cannot stand her.
Lively was also heavily criticized for her many lighthearted interview snippets and cross-promotion of her new hair-care line and alcohol line because of the film’s serious, domestic violence storyline. She was trying to cross promote her other products while promoting a film about domestic violence and it really came off ugly. She has earned a ton of bad publicity and it looks like she is trying to rehab her image and steal money and possibly the rights to the sequel from Baldoni.
‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine Private messages detail an alleged campaign to tarnish Blake Lively after she accused Justin Baldoni of misconduct on the set of “It Ends With Us.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html
Now I’m Interested.* Seems Baldoni hired a PR firm to defame BL with these tales. (Emails to be exposed) It’s Depp Heard all over again. Who will be believed?
Never watched Depp so…
I had started to jump in on this last night, but I found myself (as usual) getting drawn into long tangents. I haven’t seen the movie. Nor have I read the book. But in my still relatively new retirement hobby, an endless quest for worthy “conservative” or conservative adjacent films, I have started paying more attention to things that stir up a storm in MovieLand. I have a tangential interest in a couple of the people involved with this, so it has been in my peripheral vision.
Anyhow: at this point, I share your take on this. A lot of what Blake Lively is raising in her complaint consists of her feeling uncomfortable over scenes that were discussed but were never shot, or additional takes that she thought were unnecessary, or JB adlibbing a line that she thought broke from character. She alleges that various things should have been choreographed by an intimacy coordinator; well, there was an intimacy coordinator on set, and what was she doing? Some of the accusations involve not JB, but another producer, who was pushing for various things to which she successfully objected. And she throws in a thing or two to which she reluctantly agreed, after long discussion, but which she now regrets.
It’s important to note that BL isn’t a 20 year old unknown, desperate for her break, powerless in the industry, faced with the classic “do it or we’ll get someone else and your career is probably over” ultimatum. She’s had a long and pretty successful career. She’s married to one of the most bankable actors in the industry. She and hubby are a Hollywood power couple. She spends a lot of her spare time palling around with Taylor Swift as part of the TS posse. If this becomes a war of dueling fandoms, or a war of who can bankrupt whom with armies of lawyers, it’s a one sided fight.
So why bring this up now? It’s not the money; BL and Ryan Reynolds don’t need the money and they will spend more on lawyers than they could ever recoup from JB. The production became a battleground. The PR tour was difficult. The cast was pushed into taking sides in a David vs. Goliath fight. JB has always had a reputation as one of the good guys, and I am skeptical that he suddenly turned into a monster this time around. Maybe his image is all a facade and there really is a monster behind the mask, but that remains to be seen.
In the background, the long-running dispute seems to have originated in different views on the tone and direction of the movie. JB was pushing for a much darker film while BL want it to develop as a triumph of an heroic woman who survives a predator and slays her own demons in the process. Apparently she and Ryan Reynolds tried to roll JB, who owned the rights, and it got ugly. But that too is now in the past. So what’s the point?
I can only see two possibilities. One, as you have suggested, is that BL seems to have gotten hammered by the obsessives who have followed this production closely from the start. I am not one of those people, but my sense (as a matter of peripheral vision) is that her pride has been stung. Escalating this now, however, seems to me to be playing with fire and, very likely, pouring good money after bad. The movie was a considerable commercial success. Take the money and run. Let the social media stuff fade away.
The other possible issue would be the rumored sequel, which has been discussed for a long time now. Given how this has gotten so toxic, a sequel may be out of the question now, but ... well ... maybe? The wrinkle here is that the author of the source novel sold the rights to JB, which is the trump card he has been holding all along. The movie was not yet on anyone’s radar screen, and going forward was a high risk gamble. JB took the chance, bought the rights, and his studio produced it with JB as the director. At some point, when this became a big deal, dollar signs started dancing in the author’s head, and she wanted to renegotiate her take. JB refused. I don’t know if they’ve reached a deal, but I gather that the author sided with BL and Ryan Reynolds when they tried to buy the rights from JB, who turned them down as well.
So yeah. Blood in the water. JB is an indie film guy with a tiny independent studio, and he’s involved in a David and Goliath fight with the Bigfeet. If the indie film guy turns out to be a closeted monster and BL is a wronged innocent, I’ll change my tune, but unless and until that happens, I’m for the little guy in this kind of fight.