By With the second half of Summer film resurgence dominated by animated, sci-fi and superhero fare, one of the few straight-up dramas to have done very well is “It Ends With Us” which has racked up $242 million worldwide box-office so far from a budget of just $25 million.
The film has been a hit so the push for a sequel is understandable, especially as the source material for the first film – Colleen Hoover’s bestselling book of the same name – already has a sequel titled “It Starts With Us”.
Undercutting it is the apparent feud going on with the film’s star Blake Lively and its director/co-star Justin Baldoni, a feud that has become quite public with Variety posting new details today.
Rumors of a beef between Baldoni and the rest of the cast emerged in early August when he did not show up at the New York premiere, and none of the cast follows him on social media bar Hasan Minhaj who plays his brother-in-law. There was speculation that Lively and Baldoni clashed over the final cut of the movie, with Lively’s version being the one that got released.
Lively also admitted during a red carpet interview that her husband Ryan Reynolds wrote a key scene in the final cut of the film, news that surprised Baldoni who thought the scene had been ad-libbed by Lively. The trade’s sources indicate the scene was done before the WGA strike in May last year.
One source says of the chances of a sequel are slim to none: “This is uncharted territory, and nobody has any idea of what a sequel could look like. There’s probably no world where these two [Lively & Baldoni] will work together again.”
Neither Baldoni or Lively have publicly addressed the talk, but the trade says the bad blood between the two “is very real and the relationship may not be salvageable”.
Yet neither the rumors or any of these sources are able to come up with a clear, simple explanation as to what led to the feud and falling out with Lively in the first place. Additionally Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios label has rights to both the film and any potential screen sequel.
Baldoni has previously suggested that he won’t direct the sequel, and his role is much smaller in the second book’s narrative anyway so it will be easier for him to step aside for big chunks of production if they do it.
Source: Variety
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