Despite It Ends With Us hitting theaters in the summer of 2024, the drama surrounding that movie continues. When Blake Lively filed a suit against Wayfarer Studios, a long legal saga began, including Justin Baldoni's defamation case against Lively and Ryan Reynolds, as well as the New York Times for its reporting of the drama. Now that publication is suing for legal fees, leading the actor/director's lawyers to issue their own response. Lets break it all down.
The director of It Ends With Us (streaming now with a Netflix subscription) filed his defamation suit in January of 2025, targeting Lively as well as the New York Times for running a story about the alleged smear campaign aimed at the actress. Baldoni's defamation case was tossed out back in June, and now Deadline reports that the NY Times is suing "Around $150,000 in attorney’s fees, damages and more." The filing reads:
The District Court’s opinion makes clear that Wayfarer and its affiliates both commenced and continued the lawsuit against The Times without a substantial basis in fact and law.
There you have it. There is yet another lawsuit currently surrounding this movie, this time aimed at its director/star. The New York Times wants to be reimbursed for the money spent defending itself from the defamation case, as well as some potential damages. Clearly Baldoni's lawyers are going to stay hard at work for the foreseeable future.
The filing claims that the outlet had a right to cover the story under its fair report privilege, and that Baldoni had no right to sue the outlet at all. For his part, the It Ends With Us director's lawyers have issued a statement about this latest turn in the legal saga, which reads:
Win, lose, or draw, we refuse to cave to power brokers even in the face of seemingly impossible odds. We continue to stand tall for a reason: the pursuit of truth, in the face of giants. Our unwillingness to compromise our values, no matter the odds or the outcome, reflects a simple conviction that standing up for the truth and what is right matters. If the current laws protect legacy media in this manner, perhaps it’s up to us to ignite that change.
Those are some fighting words. Despite the legal setbacks that Baldoni has faced in recent months, his lawyers are showing no signs of backing down. And as such, more stories surrounding this particular book to movie adaptation are likely going to keep coming.
Lively and Baldoni have spent a ton of money and time on this battle, and if the latter has to cough up money for the New York Times it'll be even more expensive. One can only imagine the cost of their legal fees after nearly a year of back and forth.
It Ends with Us is streaming on Netflix, and Blake Lively has a number of projects lined up on the 2026 movie release list and beyond. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Justin Baldoni. At least, not according to his IMDb.
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