“It Ends With Us” director and star Justin Baldoni has filed a countersuit demanding $400 million in damages in opposition to Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds after the actress late final month hit Baldoni with a bombshell legal complaint accusing him of sexual harassment and a smear marketing campaign to break her repute.
Baldoni’s legal professional Bryan Freedman kicked off 2025 with a go well with filed in opposition to the New York Times for defamation, however he has now adopted that up with one other lawsuit filed in New York. In it, Baldoni denies the accusations in Lively’s 80-page criticism (later was a proper lawsuit) and accuses Lively, her husband Reynolds, and her PR crew, VisionPR and boss Leslie Sloane, of being chargeable for a smear marketing campaign in opposition to Baldoni, not the opposite means round.
The go well with, a 179-page doc filed by Baldoni and his manufacturing firm Wayfarer Studios, additional claims that the messages offered in Lively’s criticism have been taken out of context, that Sloane planted unfavorable information tales about Baldoni, and that the authorized transfer was designed to assist rebuild Lively’s personal repute after it was broken throughout the PR campaign for “It Ends With Us.”
“This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media,” Freedman stated in an announcement to IndieWire.
He continued: “It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth. Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation gain at the expense of those without power. Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”
Lively’s authorized crew filed its personal lawsuit in opposition to Baldoni and Wayfarer on Dec. 31 and on the time blasted Baldoni’s lawsuit in opposition to the New York Times.
“This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal,” the assertion from Dec. 31 reads. “As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.”
Baldoni’s countersuit is the newest in one of many ugliest leisure media tales of 2024. On December 20, Lively issued a authorized criticism (not a proper lawsuit) accusing Baldoni of retaliation, negligence, breach of contract, and intentional infliction of emotional misery, in addition to Baldoni hiring a disaster PR agency to flood social media with unfavorable feedback about Lively with a purpose to injury her repute after problems with sexual harassment and misconduct allegedly occurred on the “It Ends With Us” set. Baldoni has denied all of the claims.
Among different claims, Lively’s criticism stated Baldoni mentioned his intercourse life together with her and improvised undesirable kissing with out her consent, that he repeatedly entered her trailer whereas she was undressed, and that producer Jamey Heath engaged in comparable inappropriate exercise, together with exhibiting her a video of his spouse bare. Baldoni additionally allegedly sought so as to add intercourse scenes past what was featured within the script, and that as retaliation for her complaints to the studio, Baldoni employed a disaster PR agency to launch a “social combat plan” to hurt Lively.
Since the criticism was launched, Baldoni was dropped by his brokers at WME (who additionally signify Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds), he had an award for girls’s solidarity revoked from him, and he was hit with one other lawsuit by his former publicist.
“It Ends With Us” was hounded with drama and Internet hypothesis in regards to the on set friction between Baldoni and Lively, who by no means appeared in interviews collectively in help of the film. The consideration helped buoy the field workplace efficiency for the Colleen Hoover adaptation to $350.9 million in opposition to a $25 million manufacturing funds.
At the time, Lively and Hoover in press interviews averted discussions of the movie’s frank themes of home violence and targeted on it being a narrative of ladies’s uplift, a transfer that provoked strong criticism. But that too was allegedly a product of the ugly smear marketing campaign as outlined in Lively’s go well with.
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