About 18 months after the film It Ends With Us imploded in a tangle of lawsuits, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have reached a settlement in their legal dispute.
The movie, starring Lively and Baldoni as romantic partners whose relationship turns abusive, was based on a popular Colleen Hoover novel and released in August 2024 to great box office success.
But online sleuths deduced that something was off when Baldoni did not appear in photos with the cast at the premiere and was a limited presence on the movie’s press tour
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Several months later, Lively sued Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, for sexual harassment and retaliation; she accused Baldoni (who also directed the film) of misconduct on set and attempting to ruin her reputation via an online smear campaign when she spoke up.
Two weeks later, Baldoni sued Lively and her movie star husband, Ryan Reynolds, for $400 million for defamation; he alleged that Lively wrested control of the movie and tried to destroy his career and those of his colleagues.
“The parties in the Blake Lively and Wayfarer Studios litigation have reached an agreement to resolve the matters,” read a joint statement Monday released by the lawyers for both actors.
“The end product — the movie It Ends With Us — is a source of pride to all of us who worked to bring it to life. Raising awareness, and making a meaningful impact in the lives of domestic violence survivors — and all survivors — is a goal that we stand behind.”
“We acknowledge the process presented challenges and recognise concerns raised by Ms. Lively deserved to be heard,” the statement continued. “We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments.
“It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment online.”
The back-and-forth of the sprawling battle became a source of public fascination and endless online discourse about who really has the power in the entertainment industry — especially when documents leaked that included reams of text messages and other communication between all parties involved (such as Lively’s close friend Taylor Swift, in whom she confided about the matter), as well as the public relations and crisis management professionals Baldoni enlisted.
Shortly before he filed his lawsuit against Lively, Baldoni sued the New York Times for $250 million for libel for running a story headlined We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, which detailed the alleged machinations from Baldoni’s crisis PR team behind the scenes to paint Lively in a negative light on the internet.
In her lawsuit, Lively — who broke out as a star in the early 2000s with the film The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and teen drama Gossip Girl — claimed that Baldoni made comments about her physical appearance, ignored on-set intimacy protocols and entered her trailer while she was undressed.
Lively also encountered a considerable amount of online criticism while doing press for the film, particularly for her lighthearted promotional videos that some viewers saw as the wrong tone for a movie about domestic violence.
In her complaint, Lively alleged that the extreme backlash was prompted by the PR campaign against her that Baldoni’s camp planted via social media.
Baldoni, best known before this as an actor from the telenovela Jane the Virgin, has denied all inappropriate behaviour on set. At one point, his lawyers released footage to refute the claim that a slow-dance scene made Lively uncomfortable and disputed her series of events. He alleged that Lively tried to take over creative control and used her star power to pressure him to go along with her decisions for the movie.
In June 2025, a federal judge dismissed Baldoni’s suits against Lively and the Times. Last month, the judge dismissed Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment, ruling that as an independent contractor on the film, she did not have standing to sue.
In regards to Lively and Baldoni’s differing accounts of what happened on set, the judge noted that actors “must have some amount of space to experiment within the bounds of an agreed script without fear of being held liable for sexual harassment.”
However, the judge had allowed her claims of retaliation to go forward, and the trial was set to start May 18 in New York.
(c) 2026 , The Washington Post
