The celebrity feud that first captured the world's imagination during the press tour for last year's "It Ends With Us" is being taken to the next level, with that movie's director Justin Baldoni filing a $400 million lawsuit against its star Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds alleging defamation of character and extortion.
The lawsuit also names the couple's publicist Leslie Sloane and her firm Vision PR, Inc., over their actions in the film's tumultuous production and promotional periods. In a press statement, Baldoni's attorney laid it out like this:
"This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team's duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media. It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth."
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The lawsuit comes amid multiple prior lawsuits involving the affair, including another filed by Baldoni against The New York Times over their reporting on yet another lawsuit, that one filed by Lively against Baldoni for his alleged misconduct against her, including sexual harassment and a so-called "smear campaign."
Perhaps the most unusual and arguably entertaining aspect of this whole mess is Baldoni's attempt to litigate the character "Nicepool" from last year's "Deadpool & Wolverine," which he is claiming was based on him. His attorney sent out a litigation hold letter to Disney executives Kevin Feige and Bob Iger, as well as "Deadpool" director Tim Miller, ordering them not to dispose of documentation "relating to complaints made against Ryan Reynolds by any person, including without limitation Tim Miller" as well as the conception of the character of Nicepool.
Why is a character like Nicepool being drawn into a defamation lawsuit? Because Baldoni believes the character was based on him and seems to have weighed the embarrassment of admitting this in public with the potential legal benefits it could have in the future. His attorney, Bryan Freedman, even went on "The Megyn Kelly Show" to discuss the Nicepool character in advance of the lawsuit:
"There's no question it relates to Justin. I mean, anybody that watched that hair bun…If somebody is seriously sexually harassed, you don't make fun of it. It's a serious issue."
Lively's lawyers have released a statement on their own on what they call the "meritless" lawsuit, describing it as "another chapter in the abuser playbook." "The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively's complaint, and it will fail," the statement reads.
