Justin Baldoni Adds $400M Lawsuit Against Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds To Legal Campaign: “This Is A Battle She Will Not Win And Will Certainly Regret”

Justin Baldoni is seeking at least $400 million in damages in the lawsuit filed against It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds. Previously, Lively filed her own lawsuit against Baldoni and others 10 days after lodging a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, in which she claimed her It Ends With Us co-star orchestrated a malicious smear campaign to ruin her reputation as retaliation for her complaints about Baldoni's sexual harassment on set.

According to Variety, Baldoni and his publicists accuse Lively and Reynolds of civil extortion, defamation, and invasion of privacy in the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, January 16, 2025, which seeks $400 million in damages. The lawsuit, which contains a 179-page complaint, alleged the couple deployed "their enormous power to steal an entire film" and "bend the truth" with sexual harassment allegations. Baldoni's lawyer, Bryan Freeman, has given an official statement alongside the lawsuit. Check out what he said below:

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. 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.

UPDATE: 2025/01/16 20:36 EST BY RACHEL LABONTE

Blake Lively Issues Response To Baldoni's Lawsuit

Blake Lively and her legal team have since issued their own statement about Baldoni's lawsuit (via Deadline). It reads as follows:

This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.
Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.
They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.
Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.

What Baldoni's Lawsuit Means For It Ends With Us Legal Feud

It's Getting Bigger

Baldoni first filed a suit against the New York Times for defamation, accusing the publication that first reported Lively's complaint of quoting messages and email exchanges out of context. Freeman has promised that more lawsuits will come. In the suit that was filed on Thursday, Lively's publicist Leslie Sloane and Vision PR Inc. are also named defendants. The suit also claimed that "neither the alleged sexual harassment nor the accompanying smear campaign against Lively existed" and disclosed extensive messages and email exchanges behind the Colleen Hoover movie adaptation.

Freeman has recently issued a litigation hold letter to Marvel and Disney bosses to preserve all documents related to the creation of "Nicepool," a Deadpool variant in Deadpool & Wolverinethat Baldoni alleged to have been created to make fun of him. With the newest suit including Reynolds and focusing on the couple's influence on It Ends With Us and Baldoni's reputation, the legal battle has expanded from Lively's initial complaint.

Our Take On It Ends With Us Legal Feud

It's Getting Very Serious.

Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) and Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) on a rooftop in It Ends With Us

Since Lively's complaint and lawsuit, Baldoni has been dropped by his talent agency, WME, and had a woman's solidarity reward evoked in addition to one of his podcast co-hosts quitting the project. His new suit claimed that Lively and Reynolds pressured WME to drop Baldoni. However, the agency has refuted the claim that the couple was involved in their decision. The allegations from both sides are serious, and the evidence they each provided should be taken with a grain of salt.

The key takeaway from Baldoni's 179-page complaint is the detailed documentation of the production process behind It Ends With Us. Reynolds allegedly wrote the rooftop scene, and the document sheds some light on Reynolds' involvement in a high-grossing romantic feature. Whether the couple hijacked the film, It Ends With Us was still a smash success.

Source: Variety