It’s been hard to avoid It Ends with Us . The big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel that became a BookTok sensation was released a week ago after six long months of feverish promotion. As as well as endless interviews with its romantic lead and producer Blake Lively , and the usual massive billboard and bus adverts, the advertising has included pop-up flower shops, a treasure hunt across New York City for signed copies of the book, and viral videos of flower-arranging, wood sculpting and hot cocoa cookie recipes.
Lively herself has proven herself a marketing genius. The film sees her character Lily Bloom fulfil a lifelong dream of opening a flower shop (yes), and so for months she’s stepped out with floral outfits or blooms in her hair (she is also, it’s worth stating, promoting her own haircare and drinks brands at the same time). Her dedicated embrace of the film’s aesthetic follows Zendaya’s months in tennis gear to promote this year’s Challengers , and of course Margot Robbie’s Barbie -pink summer of 2023.
In fact, without knowing much about It Ends with Us , you’d be forgiven for thinking it had a lot in common with Barbie . As well as all those “girly” visuals, it’s been dubbed the girls’ movie of the season, and there’s a trend on TikTok of young women going to the cinema to see it accompanied by the same friend with whom they watched Barbie last year. Like Barbie , too, which was released on the same day as Oppenheimer , the .