Justin Baldoni has sued Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, the actress’s publicist Leslie Sloan and the couple’s publicity firm Vision PR for $400 million. The move comes after his $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times and two weeks after Lively sued Baldoni for alleged sexual harassment, retaliation and more.
Attorney Bryan Freedman filed the lawsuit on Jan. 16 in New York on behalf of Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios, It Ends With Us co-producer Jamey Heath, publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan. All parties were named in Lively’s lawsuit in which she accused Baldoni and Heath of misconduct on the set of the film and alleged his publicists launched a smear campaign that ruined her reputation. They have denied all allegations and Freedman has been alluding to Thursday’s lawsuit for weeks.
According to the lawsuit obtained by Yahoo Entertainment, Lively “stole” the Baldoni-directed film It Ends With Us, and if it weren’t for her “self-inflicted press catastrophe she faced in August 2024, the public would likely have moved on and never known the truth about her.”
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Some of the anecdotes included in the 179-page document will likely grab headlines. The lawsuit claims that Lively never read Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book It Ends With Us and that she Googled the hair color of her character Lily. Lively allegedly would not meet with the film’s domestic violence partner organization and embarked on a “tone-deaf” press tour. The lawsuit claims Lively served the Los Angeles-based defendants “as they evacuated their homes in the midst of devastating fires engulfing their city.”
Reps for Lively, Reynolds and Sloan did not return Yahoo Entertainment’s requests for comment.
“This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media,” Freedman told Yahoo in a statement on Thursday. “It is clear based on our own all-out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real-time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret.”
Freedman continued, “Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth. Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation gain at the expense of those without power. Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”
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The group is suing Lively, Reynolds and Sloan for civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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