The greatest argument in opposition to releasing a sequel to Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick‘s terrific 1028 thriller A Simple Favor can be the explanation the film is so hotly anticipated. How do you high the unique movie’s jaw-dropping twists and turns (Incest! Pantsuits! A shared Henry Golding!) with out promoting out its end-carded joyful ending? Should director Paul Feig even strive?
Sorry to those that want their favorites most popular in amber, as a result of the reply to that final query is “well, he already did.” Since 2022, Feig has been exhausting at work on A Simple Favor 2, with Jessica Sharzer again as screenwriter. Kendrick, now a lauded kingpin in her personal proper for assured directorial debut Woman of the Hour, returned to play mommy vlogger Stephanie Smothers. Lively can be again as Emily Nelson, a sororicidal and customarily poisonous public relations exec.
Speaking of public relations, that is arguably what Lively’s been as much as in current weeks. Just just a few nights earlier than Christmas, Blake Lively took over the information cycle with a set of bombshell allegations in opposition to co-star/director Justin Baldoni and the producers of It Ends With Us, that drama-plagued adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s 2016 novel concerning the cyclical nature of home violence.
After Lively’s claims that Baldoni and his firm orchestrated a PR marketing campaign in opposition to her had been reported by the New York Times, Baldoni, his public relations staff, and his studio sued the newspaper for $250 million, alleging that their report on Lively’s California court docket submitting was libelous. On December 31, Lively formally filed go well with in opposition to Baldoni and his studio, alleging sexual harassment and “a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out.”
Damages in that go well with are unspecified; through assertion, Bryan Freedman, the lawyer for Baldoni’s aspect of the aisle, forecefully denies the allegations. “It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives,” he told Vanity Fair last month. “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
So far, the curveballs thrown between the It Ends With Us events since December threaten to rival no matter Sharzer might need give you for her script—and in accordance with false rumors persistently unfold throughout social media (and emailed and DMed to reporters, I’ll personally be aware) the fracas has prompted Amazon to drop the film utterly.
It’s a declare that makes little sense if you consider it for even a second. Interest in Lively stays excessive, with many springing to her protection in current weeks or reexamining why her repute had just lately taken such a beating. Why a distributor would take a movie starring a wildly buzzed-about actor and put it on a shelf looks as if a foul enterprise determination, as a minimum.