The alleged feud between Blake Lively and her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni has escalated. What started as online sleuths noticing a distinct distance between Lively and Baldoni at the premiere of the romantic drama, has ramped up to Baldoni’s hiring of a crisis expert, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Baldoni has recruited PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan as the speculation of bad blood between him and Lively reached a fever pitch.
Baldoni has been hit with negative press as social media users continue to trawl for clues after he and Lively failed to pose for group photos together at the film’s New York premiere on August 6. Adding fuel to the flame is the fact that while Baldoni follows Lively, author Colleen Hoover whose bestselling book upon which the film was adapted, and other cast members on social media, they don’t follow him back. Those two things alone wouldn’t be evidence enough of a beef but Lively and Baldoni didn’t do any joint interviews or press conferences during the press tour, which is very unusual for a romantic drama where the studio would be keen to promote the chemistry between its leads.
Soon, unsourced leaks dribbled out, with the most damning piece being a titbit fed to The Hollywood Reporter that there had been competing edits of the film. According to those sources, Lively, who was also a producer, had commissioned her own edit of It Ends With Us from Shane Reid, who was the editor of Deadpool & Wolverine, which .