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Key Points:
On 8 September 2025, Lively’s legal team filed a motion demanding millions in attorney fees.
Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during the filming of It Ends With Us (2024) and claimed his team ran an online smear campaign against her.
Despite the lawsuit’s dismissal, new allegations of Baldoni’s troubled on-set behaviour and verbal abuse have surfaced.
It Ends With Us (2024) legal lawsuit has taken another turn. The legal team of Blake Lively filed a motion on 8 September 2025, demanding millions of dollars to cover her attorney fees. In the motion, they argued that Justin Baldoni should pay millions for filing the defamation suit against her.
The recent development follows one of the most talked-about smear campaigns and controversies regarding the 2024 adaptation of Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us. Lively accused her co-star and director Baldoni of sexual harassment while filming the movie.
She alleged that Baldoni’s team orchestrated a strong smear campaign on the internet against her for speaking out about her horrible experience with the director. Shortly after, Justin Baldoni filed a $400 million lawsuit against her, claiming she attempted to ruin his career and image in the industry with sexual harassment allegations.
Blake Lively’s legal team filed their latest demand after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Protecting Survivors from Weaponised Defamation Lawsuits Act in 2023. According to the motion, the act protects sexual harassment victims who share their narrative with courts, the press, or others “without fear of being sued for doing so.”
The law also protects victims who have a ‘reasonable basis’ to file a complaint without malice or bad intentions. It ensures that sexual harassment victims are shielded from defamation lawsuits by defendants. Lively’s legal team argued that these conditions are met in the controversial case between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
However, California courts have not finalized whether the act applies in Lively’s case. Baldoni’s lawyers dismissed the motion. They earlier stated that the sexual allegations were orchestrated against Baldoni “either wholesale or by exaggerating benign (and not harassing) interactions in a concerted, malicious effort to seize control of the Film.”
Baldoni’s attorney further claimed that the harassment narrative was falsely fabricated to restore the star’s reputation “after a well-publicized series of marketing missteps that sullied her reputation.”
Lively’s new demand marks yet another setback for the director. In June, Judge Lewis Liman dismissed the $400 million lawsuit filed by Justin Baldoni. In a recently released court document, the director faced “fresh” accusations of troubled behaviour on set and “verbal abuse.”
The complainant, who has not revealed their identity, shared their experience working with the director. The person claimed they had “negative interactions” with him, “had repeated, negative interactions with Mr. Baldoni and his associates, including verbal abuse by Mr. Baldoni.”
According to sources, the anonymous individual may testify in Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al., scheduled for trial in March 2026 in New York.
It Ends With Us (2024), starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, could have been the next big cultural phenomenon following Barbenheimer—the simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Instead, have the dramatic smear campaign and the legal battles involving the film’s lead actors turned it into a never-ending nightmare? [Rh/VS]
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