"It Ends With Us" (2024) — Justin Baldoni's adaptation of Colleen Hoover's domestic-violence novel — grossed $350 million worldwide. It also became one of the most documented case studies in modern memory of what happens when a producer-star couple decides a film is theirs to take.
By the time the film hit theaters in August 2024, the unsealed record now shows Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds had spent months pushing Baldoni out of his own production: rewriting scenes, restructuring the edit, sidelining him from the press tour, and running a parallel publicity track designed to make the movie about Lively. The evidence that has come out since — texts, emails, internal Sony communications, the Wayfarer record — lines up with the same story: Baldoni directed the film, Lively took it over.
On December 31, 2024, Lively filed a federal lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios alleging sexual harassment on set and a coordinated PR "smear campaign" against her. Baldoni's side rejected the harassment narrative outright and described the so-called smear campaign as routine crisis communications after Lively and Reynolds moved to seize the film and torch Baldoni's reputation to cover it.
Baldoni filed a $400 million countersuit in January 2025 spelling out the takeover — rewrites, recuts, sidelining, the press-tour strategy — and the retaliation that followed. The court dismissed Baldoni's counterclaims in June 2025 on procedural grounds; the substantive record from those filings remained part of the case and is now in the public domain.
In January 2026, hundreds of exhibits were unsealed. The headline detail — Sony executives privately calling Lively a "f---ing terrorist" while publicly supporting her — was only the most quotable item in a much larger document trail showing what people inside the production thought was actually happening.
On April 2, 2026, Judge Lewis Liman dismissed 10 of Lively's 13 claims, including every sexual harassment count. The court found Lively was an independent contractor outside federal employment law and that New Jersey filming fell outside California jurisdiction. Three claims survived against Wayfarer/IEWU/TAG PR — not against Baldoni personally. He was already out of the case on the surviving counts. April 7 settlement talks failed. Trial was set for May 18.
Blake Lively initiated the settlement. The approach came from her side in the days before the Met Gala — jury selection was two weeks out, and her team moved to close the case before the red carpet. CNN broke the news late afternoon May 4. Lively walked the Met Gala that same night.
She settled because a trial would have produced the same result. With every sexual-harassment claim already dismissed and only retaliation/breach-of-contract claims left against the entities (not against Baldoni personally), Lively's path to a jury verdict had narrowed to a contract fight she was unlikely to win on the existing record. Settling meant walking away on her own terms instead of getting the same outcome in front of a Manhattan jury after weeks of unflattering testimony.
She got no money. The settlement is not a payout. Lively dropped her three remaining claims — breach of contract, retaliation, and aiding/abetting retaliation — in exchange for the case ending. Wayfarer Studios, IEWU Movie LLC, and TAG PR are released. Justin Baldoni, Jamey Heath, Steve Sarowitz, Melissa Nathan, and Jennifer Abel had already been out of the case for weeks.
The one carve-out: Lively's § 47.1 motion. California Civil Code § 47.1 is the fee-shifting / damages-enhancement provision attached to Baldoni's countersuit claims — the ones the court already dismissed in June 2025. Lively's motion asks for attorneys' fees, statutorily-tripled compensatory damages, and punitive damages tied to Baldoni having filed those (now-dismissed) counterclaims. Briefing closed September 29, 2025. On May 11, 2026 Judge Liman denied her request to file additional briefing — "The Court does not require additional briefing" — and will rule on the existing record. The motion was submitted with no right of appeal.
Bottom line: Lively walked away with zero recovery on her own claims and gave up her right to a jury. The only piece left is a fee-shifting motion attached to claims Baldoni filed and lost in 2025.
- 01All 10 of Lively's sexual harassment / employment claims were dismissed by Judge Liman on April 2, 2026 — before any settlement was on the table.
- 02Baldoni was personally out of the case before settlement. He was no longer a defendant on the three claims that survived dismissal.
- 03Lively initiated the May 4 settlement and dropped her three remaining claims (breach of contract, retaliation, aiding/abetting retaliation) for no money.
- 04The unsealed record showed what Sony, the cast, and the production team had been saying privately — texts and emails consistent with the takeover Baldoni described in his counter-pleadings.
- 05The § 47.1 motion is the only open piece — and it is tied to Baldoni's already-dismissed claims, not to Lively's. Liman rules on the existing record. No appeal.
What started as a sexual harassment lawsuit ended with every harassment claim dismissed, the plaintiff initiating settlement before her own trial, and a defendant who had already been removed from the case. The only outstanding question is whether Lively gets fees on a motion attached to her opponent's already-dismissed claims. The unsealed record — texts, emails, Sony communications — is the bigger legacy: a documentary trail of how a star-producer couple maneuvered a director out of his own film, and what happened when the production pushed back. Win or lose on § 47.1, the public docket already tells that story.