Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds Aim To Have Justin Baldoni’s $400M Defamation Suit Tossed Out

deadline.com:

With the first actual hearing in the multi-million dollar lawsuits between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni coming up early next week, the Gossip Girl alum and spouse Ryan Reynolds have finally said the quiet part out loud. “The Lively-Reynolds Parties intend to move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint,” said a letter Thursday from attorney Michael Gottlieb Judge Lewis Liman.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past month, you’d know that Baldoni sued Lively, the Deadpool star and their PR chief Leslie Sloane for $400 million in a January 16 defamation and extortion case.

Amidst other lawsuits, an evidence preservation letter, and other accusations, that $400 million action followed Baldoni’s New Year’s Eve filing against The New York Times for $250 million and Lively’s unspecified damages lawsuit against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, its CEO, its main financier and the Jane the Virgin’s primary PR team of Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel on the last day of 2024.

With rumors of discord between the co-stars on the set of the August released IEWU in the air and online for months and afterwards, this all went full public when Lively filed her sexual harassment and retaliation complaint on December 20 with California’s Civil Rights Department, alleging inappropriate conduct by her director/co-star and a subsequent social media smear campaign.