After starring and directing It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni is not looking to repeat double duty in a potential film sequel.
“You’re gonna have to ask me in a little while. We’re gonna take a vacation after this,” Baldoni, 40, quipped to Entertainment Tonight at the Tuesday, August 6, red carpet premiere in New York City.
It Ends With Us, adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel of the same name, follows florist Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) as she enters into an abusive relationship with neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). Amid their tumultuous relationship, Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), reappears in her life. It Ends With Us spawned an It Starts With Us sequel in 2022 that takes place years after the OG book.
Should It Starts With Us be adapted for the screen, Baldoni knows who should direct it.
“I think there are better people for that one,” he quipped on Tuesday. “I think Blake Lively is ready to direct. That’s what I think.”
The Gossip Girl alum made her directorial debut with her best friend Taylor Swift’s “I Bet You Think About Me” music video in 2021, which earned Lively an ACM nomination.
Back in front of the cameras, Hoover, 44, thought Baldoni and Lively, 36, were the “dream” versions of the It Ends With Us characters.
“Blake Lively, y’all. She’s my dream Lily,” Hoover gushed via Instagram in January 2023. “And then when I first met Justin Baldoni, who is directing the film for It Ends With Us, I immediately wanted him to be Ryle. I just thought that he had what it takes to play that character, and the good news is he’s gonna be Ryle.”
It Ends With Us was inspired by Hoover’s family history of domestic abuse, which weighed on Baldoni during the entire shoot.
“There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get him out of me and that energy out of me,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in a Wednesday, August 7, profile. “Because it’s too real.”
He added, “There are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day, and I wanted it to be as real as possible and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes.”
It Ends With Us debuts in theaters on Friday, August 9.
If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
