Despite It Ends With Us hitting theaters in the summer of 2024, the drama surrounding that movie continues. When Blake Lively filed a suit against Wayfarer Studios, a long legal saga began, including Justin Baldoni’s defamation case against Lively and Ryan Reynolds, as well as the New York Times for its reporting of the drama. Now that publication is suing for legal fees, leading the actor/director’s lawyers to issue their own response. Lets break it all down.
The director of It Ends With Us (streaming now with a Netflix subscription) filed his defamation suit in January of 2025, targeting Lively as well as the New York Times for running a story about the alleged smear campaign aimed at the actress. Baldoni’s defamation case was tossed out back in June, and now Deadline reports that the NY Times is suing “Around $150,000 in attorney’s fees, damages and more.” The filing reads:
book to movie adaptation are likely going to keep coming.
Lively and Baldoni have spent a ton of money and time on this battle, and if the latter has to cough up money for the New York Times it’ll be even more expensive. One can only imagine the cost of their legal fees after nearly a year of back and forth.
It Ends with Us is streaming on Netflix, and Blake Lively has a number of projects lined up on the 2026 movie release list and beyond. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Justin Baldoni. At least, not according to his IMDb.