Colleen Hoover has written many books that have taken the world by storm such as Hopeless and Maybe Someday. Her most popular book, It Ends with Us, is about a woman named Lily who makes a name for herself by creating her own flower shop. She falls for a neurosurgeon, Ryle, who, at first glance, seems perfect in every way. As the story unfolds, readers begin to see that Lily is in a domestic violence situation with Ryle. The story was meant to be a beacon of hope for women in similar situations, but the audience feels the movie is lacking.
The movie adaptation of this book, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, was released on Aug. 9. The initial blowback for the movie began with the trailers and promotions. Many people believed that the movie was romanticizing the idea of domestic violence. The trailers do not make it well known that domestic violence is a main topic in the film. In one promotional video Lively encourages people to “grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it.” Many fans have felt outraged by this as they feel the topic of this movie should not be presented like it will be a fun time with your friends. People are also upset that she is using this movie to promote her own brands: Blake Brown, Betty Booze, and Betty Buzz. The audience believes she is ignoring the heavy topic of the movie and only trying to drum up business. Fans want her to tell female viewers that this movie can be a beacon of hope for them.
On the flip side, many fans are praising her co-star Baldoni for his message of encouragement in which he says “everybody has the ability to end a cycle [of abuse] that they didn’t ask for.” These two differing responses by the actors have led to speculations of drama between the co-stars. It began at the movie’s premiere where it appeared that Baldoni was not pictured with his costars. According to Variety, fans discovered that Baldoni does not follow any of his costars on Instagram. Along with the fact that he did not introduce the film alongside Lively and Hoover, people believe that there is some bad blood. Baldoni’s company Wayfarer Studios has the rights to both It Ends with Us and its sequel It Starts with Us. Fans speculate this may have caused some arguments between Baldoni and Hoover about what parts of the movie were kept in the final cut. Ultimately, fans are siding with Baldoni not only because he is taking the topic of the movie seriously, but also because more information about how Blake Lively acts is surfacing.
With all the publicity surrounding the movie drama, old interviews with Lively began to surface. In 2016, Lively and a previous co-star, Parker Posey, had an interview with Norwegian reporter Kjersti Flaa. During the interview, Flaa asks Lively and Posey about the clothes in the film. Lively quickly shuts her down asking “I wonder if they would ask the men about the clothes?” Soon Posey and Lively began to talk to each other rather than to the interviewer, acting as if she was not there. Flaa only ended up asking three questions during the interview and felt devastated afterward. With this surfacing, people were outraged and felt that Lively was presenting mean girl behavior. People sympathized with Flaa and used this interview to show why Lively is a rude person. This gave the audience all the ammunition they needed to fully support Baldoni with whatever was going on behind the scenes.
The response to this movie is a warning to other production companies of the power of the media. Although the publicity surrounding the movie was not good, it was still publicity. At the end of the day, this drama helped the movie make 242 million dollars at the box office. This situation got people talking, which is one of the best things that can happen for a new movie.
Kylie Smith 
Lenora Kirkland 
Hannah Gerber