Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have reached a settlement to end their legal war over the movie It Ends With Us, canceling a trial that was scheduled to start this month and include evidence about Taylor Swift.
Trial had been slated to begin May 18 on Lively’s allegation that Baldoni, her co-star and director on the 2024 movie, orchestrated a PR smear campaign in retaliation for her complaints of on-set sexual harassment. But on Monday (May 4), the two announced that they’d “reached an agreement to resolve the matters.”
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Terms of the settlement, including financial figures, were not made public. Baldoni did not admit to any wrongdoing; he has maintained that there was zero harassment on his set, and that his media strategy was merely a response to Lively’s bad-faith efforts to seize creative control of the film and ruin his reputation.
In a joint statement, Lively and Baldoni said, “The end product — the movie It Ends With Us — is a source of pride to all of us who worked to bring it to life. Raising awareness and making a meaningful impact in the lives of domestic violence survivors — and all survivors — is a goal that we stand behind.”
“We acknowledge the process presented challenges and recognize concerns raised by Ms. Lively deserved to be heard,” continued the statement. “We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments. It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment online.”
While predominantly a movie industry battle, Lively and Baldoni’s legal dispute has also dragged in one of the biggest names in music: Swift. That’s because Baldoni claimed that Lively weaponized her friendship with the pop superstar for leverage against him.
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Swift was not on the witness list and was never deposed (despite the Baldoni team’s efforts), but her name was on a list of individuals who might come up if the case had gone to trial. This primarily would have been through her text messages with Lively that Baldoni obtained in discovery, including one in wihch Swift celebrated the use of her hit Folklore track “My Tears Ricochet” in the It Ends With Us trailer.
“If Justin was strategic he would be like no Taylor Swift in the trailer because that gives you more power over the film, that’s your ally not his,” Swift wrote to Lively in April 2024. Lively responded, “Get yourself a best friend who thinks like the actual Roman Empire.” Swift replied, “His misogyny runs so deep he thinks women are incapable of winning chess matches or making long game power plays.”
Lively’s camp has consistently maintained that Swift had no meaningful involvement in the movie and that Baldoni only brought her into the lawsuit for clout. Swift’s reps said the same when she was subpoenaed last year, writing in a statement that the maneuver was “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Lively’s lawyers said this wasn’t a new strategy for Baldoni; a key piece of their own trial evidence package would have been a 2024 strategy document authored by Baldoni’s publicists, which recommended “planting stories about the weaponization of feminism and how people in BL’s circle, like Taylor Swift, have been accused of utilizing these tactics to ‘bully’ into getting what they want.”
