Poor Justin Baldoni and the $400M Machine He Couldn’t Beat

He Tried to Make Art. She Made a Brand: What the It Ends With Us Fallout Really Reveals About Power

By Sara Alba | June 10, 2025

Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. The lawsuit is ongoing. The cultural conversation is evolving. And so is the way we talk about power.

There’s a version of this story where Justin Baldoni is the villain. That’s how it’s been spun. Too emotional. Too reactive. Too “in his feelings” about a film that, to most viewers, looked like a Pinterest board that caught fire mid-take.

But here’s the part they left out.

The movie came out. And it flopped—not because of the subject matter, but because everything that made the original story matter got washed in pastel and panic. What was supposed to be a brutal, cathartic portrait of domestic abuse became a sponsored aesthetic moment. Pain, prettified. Violence, softened. And Justin Baldoni? He was collateral damage.

This isn’t a film feud. This is what happens when the wrong person tells the right story—and silences the one who tried to do it justice.

When a Man Tries to Do It Differently

Justin Baldoni never stood a chance. He wasn’t built for the studio games or the whisper campaigns. He wasn’t PR-coached to smile while bleeding out.

Instead, he showed up with feeling. Vulnerable. Hopeful. With a script that didn’t just follow Colleen Hoover’s story—it tried to hold space for it. A man directing a story about abuse, healing, and female pain... and not centering himself? Hollywood didn’t know what to do with that.

So it did what it always does with earnest men who don’t perform power in the approved ways: it ignored him. Until he pushed back.

And then it punished him.

The Lawsuit Isn’t the Story. The Silence Is.

The lawsuit is real. But if you’ve noticed, the coverage is vague. Carefully worded. Strategically light on details.

There’s a reason for that. Because if the public actually heard what went down—if we were told why creative decisions were hijacked, why Baldoni was cut out of the process of the very film he championed—the narrative would shift.

And Blake Lively’s team made sure it wouldn’t.

America’s Sweetheart™ Is Just Good at Looking Innocent

Let’s talk about Blake.

She’s not just a blonde with a Pinterest-perfect lifestyle. She’s a brand wrapped in wit and curated captions. And when things go south, she doesn’t address it—she edits around it. Drops a cute photo. Links arms with Ryan. Posts a vintage dress and a loaf of bread. Voilà. Crisis averted.

And it worked. Again.

She didn’t break the system. She manipulated it. Expertly. Cynically. Quietly.

Want to understand how? Start with when the golden girl turns villain—because this isn’t Blake’s first time getting away with it.

The Woman Who Hijacked the Narrative, and the Man Who Dared to Tell It

This isn’t about one bad performance or a misguided casting choice. This is about sabotage by aesthetic. It’s about what happens when a woman with more followers than craft decides she knows better than the script, the source material, and the man who tried to honour both.

Blake Lively didn’t just ignore the spirit of It Ends With Us. She suffocated it in peach-toned denial. She removed the grit, the trauma, the hard conversations—and replaced them with floral blouses and vacant stares.

And then, when criticism came?

She said nothing. Because she never has to.

Baldoni Came With a Story. She Came With a Strategy.

Here’s what’s galling: Baldoni didn’t leak a single thing. No tell-alls. No public call-outs. He didn’t run to TikTok or cry on a podcast. He filed a lawsuit—formal, respectful, controlled.

And what did she do?

She iced him out. Painted him as “difficult.” Weaponized silence like a queen with a throne to defend.

She treated his sincerity like a threat. Because it was.

This Is Bigger Than a Flop. It’s a Blueprint.

This isn't about It Ends With Us anymore. It’s about what that whole mess revealed.

It’s about how a man trying to create responsibly gets treated like a liability, while a woman prioritizing optics over impact walks away with a refreshed brand and another round of influencer deals.

It’s about how power actually works now—not through dialogue or transparency, but through control of the algorithm.

She didn’t just win the public. She erased the context.

Blake’s Not a Victim. She’s the One Holding the Eraser.

We need to stop pretending this was mutual miscommunication.

She knew what she was doing. The costume leaks, the press silence, the avoidance of any real engagement. It wasn’t mismanagement—it was design. Calculated. Executed. And profitable.

And if it left Baldoni looking weak? Even better.

Because then the story became “emotional male director can’t handle criticism,” instead of what it really was: the emotional labor of telling a painful story, stripped away by a woman too busy being palatable to be honest.

There’s a bigger cultural conversation here around who gets to be influential—and spoiler: it’s rarely the one doing the hard work.

The Movie Came Out. And It Proved Him Right.

Every critic said the same thing: it was hollow. Sanitized. A slow-motion betrayal of the book’s original intent. The tonal dissonance? Blamed on the direction. The styling. The rewrites.

But here’s what never made the headlines: Baldoni didn’t authorize those changes. He was frozen out of his own project.

We broke it all down when it first started unraveling—how Blake’s marketing missteps sparked a fan backlash that could have been avoided if the focus had been on storytelling, not spin.

If the Roles Were Reversed, We’d Be Screaming

Let’s just say it:

If Justin Baldoni had bulldozed a project led by Blake Lively, ignored her creative input, and smiled through the fallout while she got dragged online? There’d be a thinkpiece avalanche. It would be “patriarchy in action.” It would be “he stole her voice.” It would be the subject of panel discussions and Instagram infographics.

But when Blake does it? It’s... disappointing. Unfortunate. Shrugged away.

And that’s how double standards survive—by calling sabotage strategy and calling women who silence men “media-savvy.”

The Verdict Doesn’t Matter. The Spin Already Won.

This lawsuit could drag on for years. It doesn’t matter.

Blake already recused herself from the mess she made. Justin’s name is still tethered to a film that no longer reflects the story he tried to tell. He’s stuck explaining. She’s off baking croissants.

And the saddest part? We’ve seen this before. We just keep refusing to learn from it.

Don’t Call This Drama. Call It What It Is.

It’s not a feud. It’s a power dynamic. A cautionary tale. A masterclass in optics over integrity.

Blake didn’t just dodge accountability. She erased the very idea of it.

And we need to stop rewarding women who play the game better than men, instead of asking why the game still looks like this.

Keep Watching. But Watch Smarter.

If you walked away from this feeling uncomfortable, good. Sit with that. Don’t bury it in aesthetics or slick captions.

We owe better to the people who still try to do this work with honesty.

And to the women who weaponize image to rewrite reality?

We see you. Finally.