#74 The problem with the film It Ends With Us, isn't Blake Lively; it's the book it was based on

Warning: controversial opinion incoming

I don’t know whether Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds steam-rollered Justin Baldoni out of the film. I don’t know whether Justin Baldoni was a bully on set. I don’t know whether it’s important that Blake Lively has worn florals and pink to promote a movie that includes themes of domestic violence and I don’t even know if her conversations around the domestic violence in the movie have been tone deaf or not. What I do know is that if the film is causing problems, it’s probably because the book it’s based on is problematic as hell. In my humble opinion.

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There’s a lot of noise surrounding the hotly anticipated film It Ends With Us and barely any of that noise is good. It’s a film that appears to have been plagued with problems. With an initialy release date of February 2024, it finally made it into the public sphere this month. We don’t know what the hold up was and while it’s not unheard of for a film to be delayed, it is highly unusual for it to be delayed and then delayed again.

Now that it’s out, the problems only seem to be getting bigger. Everyone’s clamouring to cancel Blake Lively for bullying Justin Baldoni out of his own film, for wearing pink and florals to promote a film discussing domestic violence (although Baldoni’s pink suit seems acceptable), for not having a link to a DV charity in her Instagram account, for launching a hair care range at the same time as the film’s release. People don’t like that she’s posing on red carpets with her husband and their best friend Hugh Jackman. They don’t like that she’s not talking about domestic violence in any of her promo events (that’s not true actually, there are plenty of videos of her talking about it).

And they really don’t like that she’s profitting from a film about domestic violence. Colleen Hoover has also come under fire too but, interestingly, Baldoni, the man in charge of the production company that made the film and therefore stands to make considerably more money, hasn’t been the target of the same criticism. Can we also just take a minute to acknowledge that no one cared when Liam Neeson made a gazillion dollars from a franchise about kidnapping in Taken. No one cared when Charlize Theron made money in a film about a serial killer in Monster or when any other actor makes money from a film about murder, or rape or abuse. Just Lively and Hoover. Weird huh?