It Ends With Us… except the behind-the-scenes drama just keeps going: A look at the hit film's alleged feud

It Ends With Us is a bona fide box office hit, having narrowly missed the top spot last weekend thanks to the cinematic superhero juggernaut Deadpool & Wolverine, though in the weekdays since, it has reached No. 1.

Despite its winning numbers, the production and release has been plagued by rumors of a feud, which has apparently led director-producer-star Justin Baldoni to hire a crisis management team. (Somewhere, Olivia Wilde is having flashbacks of her scandal-riddled press tour for Don't Worry Darling.)

If you're unfamiliar with the whos, whys, and Wolverine of it all, strap in. We're taking a ride through the rumor mill.

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In 2019, Baldoni's Wayfarer Studios secured the rights to It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover's 2016 romance novel, and Blake Lively was attached to star in January 2023. Christy Hall (Daddio) adapted the book for film.

The story centers on Lily (Lively), a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood with an abusive father to begin a new life in Boston. Things seem to be on track as she follows her dreams to open her own flower shop, but when she falls in love with charming neurosurgeon Ryle (Baldoni), she begins to realize his abusive behavior only continues the harmful cycle she's been trying to escape her whole life. Their toxic love is further complicated when Lily's childhood love, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), reappears in her life, upending everything she thought she knew and wanted.

Stories of an alleged feud between Baldoni and his leading lady Lively popped up when Baldoni didn't take photos with her or the rest of the cast at the New York premiere on Aug. 6. Turns out, they weren't even in the same movie theater, with Lively and her guests in one and Baldoni and his guests in another. In fact, they two did no press together for the film, both appearing on separate morning and entertainment shows.

And that certainly doesn't look good. Which is what the internet thought. That's when the rumors about tension and creative differences on the set really started churning, with various sources telling various outlets that Baldoni allegedly made Lively “uncomfortable” about her postpartum body on set, that he cultivated an “extremely difficult” work environment for the cast, and that there were two competing cuts of the film.

According to TMZ, one scene called for Baldoni to lift Lively. Since he's had back problems in the past, Baldoni reportedly "went to his on-set trainer and asked how much she weighed and how could he train to protect his back from injury."

Lively, who had recently given birth, found out about Baldoni's comment and "felt he fat-shamed her."

In another incident, also via TMZ, Lively thought Baldoni "lingered" too long during a kissing scene. However, sources tell the outlet that "some cast members are milking the drama to market the film."

Lively, who's also a producer on the film, exercised a high level of control on the set, by Baldoni's own admission.

"Blake was involved in every aspect of the film once she came onto the project, from scenes and dialogue until the end, until now," Baldoni previously told Entertainment Weekly. "She's been involved in all of it, and she's been a powerhouse of a creative and a wonderful collaborator."

When asked about possibly reteaming for an adaptation of the book's sequel, It Starts With Us, Baldoni demurred, telling Entertainment Tonight, “I think Blake Lively is ready to direct. That’s what I think.”

Though the film remains faithful to Hoover's work, Baldoni made one significant change from the book, a decision that Lively and Hoover allegedly hated. Baldoni explained to EW his reasoning behind it, saying he was adamant from the "very beginning" about how he wanted to change the way Lily experiences domestic violence from page to screen.

"I wanted the movie to feel like a memory with an unreliable narrator who was showing us what she had experienced," Baldoni told EW. "I wanted to put the audience into Lily's perspective so that they could really understand what she was going through, and why she would stay with somebody like Ryle, and show what happened one way, but then have the reality of what happened come at a time when it was impossible for both her and the audience to tell any other version."

Baldoni ended up using four different editors working independently of each other to piece together their own versions of abuse scenes, and Baldoni chose all the versions instead of just one.

"Through that process of four different edit rooms happening at the same time, we were able to bring them all together to form, as we called it, the greatest hits," Baldoni told EW. "Which is, essentially, what ended up in the film."

Whatever they thought of that new story structure specifically, both Lively and Hoover (who, incidentally, don't follow Baldoni on Instagram, though he follows Lively) publicly seemed very pleased with how the film turned out overall. Is that because the version that hit theaters is one Lively herself preferred? According to The Hollywood Reporter, conflicting ideas between filmmakers during post-production resulted in two different edits of the film. The publication also reports that Lively (and Hoover) showed her version of the film in mid-June to some 2,000 attendees at Colleen Hoover’s Book Bonanza outside of Dallas.

"This is the book that means the most with me," Hoover told ET Online at the film premiere. "I've tried to have other books adapted, and it didn't quite go to fruition. I've been praying this would happen for four or five years now, so it just means so much to me. This book is the one that's personal to me, so to get to see it on screen [is meaningful]. I watched it for the first time with my mother, who inspired the story, so words can't express how amazing this whole experience is."

"I'm just so proud of this film," Lively added. "This story resonated with so many people, so there's a great responsibility that comes with that. You want to honor this book and this character that people love so much, but you also want to bring a life and a humanity to it that is true to who you are. It's a lot of different things that you want to accomplish in this story."

Though Baldoni has praised her in interviews, Lively hasn't really returned the favor, though she did reserve special praise for another man in her life. At the New York premiere, Lively revealed that her husband — Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds — made a major contribution to the film.

"The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it. Nobody knows that but you now," Lively told E! News. "He works on everything I do. I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations are mine, and mine are his."

And Reynolds and Lively both had reasons to celebrate during the opening weekend of It Ends With Us, as the couple had the No. 1 and No. 2 movies in the world.

However, as with all scandals, each day brings new revelations. Baldoni has received the lion's share of questionable press, but Lively is not immune, as proven by a recent dragging the star took for promoting her hair care line on the back of It Ends With Us, a movie about domestic violence. A source exclusively tells EW that the launch of Lively's Blake Brown in Target stores was never meant to coincide with the release of the film, which was originally supposed to open in June.

Lively has also been criticized for a promotional video where she encouraged women to "grab your friends, wear your florals" and go see the movie, which felt out of touch given the film's bigger themes of abuse and survival.

Earlier this week, Lively posted a since-expired Instagram Story linking to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, writing, “1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the U.S. alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States. Everyone deserves relationships free from domestic violence."

But fan theories and countless TikToks analyzing every single move and comment made by Baldoni and Lively have permeated the conversation and only added to the fervor surrounding the supposed feud. Social media users have also latched onto interviews scrutinizing Lively's responses during press tours; a source tells PEOPLE that "Of course Blake got annoyed" by one reporter referencing her "little bump," while another TikTok accusing the actress of making light of another journalist's question about how fans can best share their feelings about the film with her doesn't actually show her full answer, where she acknowledges how the movie "can be healing, it can be a cautionary tale, and it can be inspiring."

Bottom line: Baldoni and Lively's relationship is a rocky one and there's more to the story. The question now becomes: It ends with what?