Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni remain locked in a legal battle that’s linked to their work on the 2024 film It Ends with Us. The situation began with Lively filing a complaint against Baldoni, who directed and co-starred alongside her in the aforementioned film. Since then, the actors have filed suit against each other, and both camps are standing firm in their respective positions. At present, Baldoni is suing Lively and others for $400 million and, now, the actress and her reps are requesting legal documents in regard to that suit.
This past January was when Justin Baldoni formally filed suit against his former collaborator for hundreds of millions of dollars. Baldoni is seeking to sue the actress, her husband, Ryan Reynolds and others for alleged defamation, extortion and more. Given that Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, his company, claim to have suffered $400 million worth of damages, Blake Lively and co. want them to provide the docs to prove it. Per TMZ, Lively’s team asked a judge to order Baldoni’s side to release financial records to back up their claims.
This isn’t the first time the Another Simple Favor star and her colleagues have sought to obtain such paperwork. The aforementioned news outlet reports that she and her legal counsel met with Team Baldoni to ask for the docs but were told they were only privy to “non-privileged documents concerning their damages.” It’s Team Lively’s contention that because Baldoni and colleagues claim to have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, they should be able to lay out how their specific monetary figure was reached.
December 2024 is when this legal skirmish began in earnest, as Blake Lively filed her complaint, in which she accused the Jane the Virgin alum of engaging in sexual harassment on set. Lively also alleged that the actor/director/producer and his PR team launched a smear campaign against her. She ultimately filed suit against her former co-star and director, Wayfarer Studios and more over the same offenses mentioned in her complaint.
Justin Baldoni subsequently denied the allegations, which were laid out in a lengthy story from The New York Times. After the fact, Baldoni sued the Times for libel in a $250 million suit. Following the release of that story in December, Baldoni was also dropped as a client from WME. The company’s head, Ari Emmanuel, later talked about parting ways with Baldoni and keeping his business ties with Lively and Reynolds. Emmanuel expressed disdain over the claims made against Baldoni and expressed commitment to the aforementioned couple, who he referred to as “good people.”
More recently, there have been other significant developments in this ongoing legal situation. This past week, Taylor Swift – who was name-dropped in leaked messages from Justin Baldoni’s crisis team early on – was subpoenaed as a witness. Swift’s team released a statement that was shared with Deadline, which stated that the singer “never set foot on the set of” It Ends with Us and that she “was not involved in any casting or creative decisions.”
A lot has also been said about the sheer amount of time and money that both Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have spent while engaged in this legal battle. Attorney Gregory Doll said in January 2025 that the case would only “get nastier” as it progressed. Doll also opined that both sides were “going to pay a lot of money and it’s going to be a lot of emotional turmoil.”
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be any indication as to when this Lively/Baldoni situation might be wrapped up. As for Lively and her team’s request for those financial documents, it remains to be seen whether they’ll be successful in obtaining them.