“When I read Colleen Hoover bestseller, it was clear that there was so much more to it than just a romance. This is a book about the human experience,” says recalls director and actor Justin Baldoni. A strong adaptation starts, of course, with a strong script, and Baldoni found the perfect screenwriter in Christy Hall a New York City based playwright who also serves as a producer on It Ends With Us.
Pictured Above: Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in IT ENDS WITH US. © 2023 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All images are property of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
It Ends With Us, the first Colleen Hoover novel adapted for the big screen, tells the compelling story of Lily Bloom, a young woman who’s determined to break free of her traumatic past but finds herself falling into the same patterns she grew up with. “By the time I decided to helm the film adaptation, It Ends With Us had become the second-best rated romance of all time on Goodreads,” recalls director Justin Baldoni. “Fans really fell in love with Lily. When I read the book, it was clear that there was so much more to it than just a romance.
The project of adapting It Ends With Us for the screen began before the film’s skyrocket to success. The book was first published in 2016, and Baldoni first reached out to Hoover in 2019 to collaborate on the adaptation. Then, in 2022, It Ends With Us took off as it gained a following among the #BookTok community of readers on TikTok. Since then, the book has spent 140 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List and has sold almost 10 million copies. Hoover is currently the best-selling author in the U.S., and the book’s sequel, It Starts With Us, became the most pre-ordered book in publisher Simon & Schuster’s history. “It just blew up,” says the filmmaker.
However, Hoover didn’t set out to write a bestseller. Rather, her goal with the novel was simply to better understand her mother, who made the heart-wrenching choice to leave an abusive relationship when Hoover was young. “I had no idea this story would reach as many people as it has,” she says. “My mother has always been a huge role model for me. She’s extremely independent and smart and level-headed. I never understood how she ended up in a relationship with my father. Writing this book helped me to understand both of them better, but it mostly healed a lot in my mother.”
When Baldoni reached out to Hoover about the film adaptation, Hoover was impressed by his ability to weave sensitive issues into compelling stories—especially considering the success of his directorial debut, Five Feet Apart, which tells the story of two teens with cystic fibrosis who fall in love. “Justin has his finger on the pulse of so many things that are important,” she says. “So I was excited and honored he wanted to take on a story that dealt with the topics in It Ends With Us. I was confident he’d be able to tell it in a way that would honor those who have walked in Lily’s shoes.”
Baldoni also reached out to producers Alex Saks and Jamey Heath to lend their perspectives to the film. “Justin and I had been cheering on each other’s work from afar for years, and we always promised one another that we’d find a film to work on together,” says Saks. “Then, one day, I got an early-morning text from Justin asking if I had time to talk. I started working on the film a few days later.”
Once the team was assembled, they got to work developing the adaptation. Heath thought carefully about how to balance the many themes in Lily’s story. “While on the one hand, we were making a movie about ending a cycle of abuse, on the other hand, we were making a movie about love,” he says. “We had to honor that paradox from the first day we began work on the film.”
Overall, the filmmakers stayed true to what made the book such a phenomenon. “We were thinking about the fans throughout,” says Baldoni. “Colleen has crafted such a beloved story, and it has created such waves culturally, that we wanted to stay true to her vision.”
With its themes of healing, redemption, and hope, Lily’s story resonates with readers and viewers even if they don’t share her experiences. “What’s beautiful about this film is there is every color of human emotion in it,” says Lively. “There’s levity, there’s joy, there’s humor, there’s hope, there’s pain, there’s tragedy, there’s violence, there’s trauma, there’s sadness, there’s exaltation. Life, death, love, and loss—a kaleidoscope of the human experience.”
In It Ends With Us Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), is a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.
A strong adaptation starts, of course, with a strong script
Baldoni found the perfect screenwriter in Christy Hall. “Colleen tells the story in a way that creates enormous empathy for every character, not just Lily,” he explains. “Making sure the audience has compassion for a person who is doing the things Lily’s husband Ryle does within the context of a two-hour film is a difficult proposition, and Christy nailed it.”
Baldoni, Hoover, and Hall knew they wanted to preserve the heart and soul of the book, so they assembled a focus group of some of the book’s biggest fans—who call themselves the CoHort—to get their input. “We put out a call on social media and got a tremendous response,” says Baldoni. “When we gathered the group, they all got to meet Colleen, read one of our first drafts, and give us their honest feedback. We got some really important information. At one point, we didn’t know if Lily should say the phrase ‘it ends with us,’ because you try to avoid saying the name of the movie in the movie. So, we tried a draft without it, and immediately the fans were like, ‘what? She didn’t say it!’ Christy and I looked at each other and just laughed, and boom, the line went back in.”
“I know that their feedback changed some of the things in the script for the better,” says Hoover. “And I just thought that was brilliant. You know, who better to tell you how the script is and what they want to see in the book than the readers themselves, who have been there from the very beginning?”
“Colleen is so protective of the fans and their experience,” says Lively. “She wanted to make sure that the film captured the heart and soul and essence of the book, and even the details were really important to her. She was an advocate for the fans, to make sure the adaptation captured the spirit of the people we fell in love with.”
JUSTIN BALDONI (Director; Ryle Kincaid) is an actor, director, producer, New York Times bestselling author, and entrepreneur whose efforts are focused on creating impactful media and entertainment. Baldoni is the co-founder of Wayfarer Studios, an independent production studio actively developing, producing, and fully financing a slate of highly original, genre-defining, and globally impactful feature films, episodic television, documentaries, unscripted series, and podcasts. He is also the co-founder of BeLove, the non-profit arm of Wayfarer Studios, which seeks to transform the way communities see and respond to the needs of unhoused populations.
In 2019, Baldoni co-founded Wayfarer Studios with business leader, humanitarian and film producer Steve Sarowitz, disrupting the typical studio model by producing stories that serve as true agents for social change. In 2020, Baldoni directed and produced Wayfarer Studios’ first feature film project Clouds, based on the book Fly a Little Higher by Laura Sobiech. The film was acquired by Disney+, becoming Disney’s first-ever narrative acquisition on its global platform.
Baldoni made his feature film directorial debut in 2019 with Five Feet Apart for CBS Films and Lionsgate, starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson. The film went on to gross $91 million worldwide, making it CBS Films’ third-highest grossing film of all time, and was nominated for several awards including a People’s Choice Award nomination for Drama Movie of 2019 and a Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Drama Movie.
Baldoni is the founder of Man Enough, a movement and content studio founded on the belief that by undefining traditional roles and traits of masculinity, men will be able to realize their potential as humans and their capacity for connection. Man Enough is a community for thought leaders, change makers, men, and people of all identities to co-create, discuss, and embark on a journey of growth together. In 2017, Baldoni spoke about his own journey with masculinity in a viral TED Talk, which has since been viewed over 8 million times, and he continues to speak on this topic at college campuses across America.
In 2021, as a follow up to his wildly popular TED Talk, Baldoni released his first book Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity with Harper Collins as part of a three-book deal. With insight and honesty, Baldoni explores a range of difficult, sometimes uncomfortable topics including strength and vulnerability, relationships and marriage, body image, sex and sexuality, racial justice, gender equality, and fatherhood.
As a complement to Man Enough, Baldoni, along with his longtime collaborator Jamey Heath and prominent masculinity expert Liz Plank, launched the popular, Webby-nominated podcast, “The Man Enough Podcast,” where they engage in intimate, open conversations with high-profile guests to investigate how traditional structures and attitudes toward success and failure, fatherhood, body image, privilege, relationships, intimacy and other issues hold back and often oppress and negatively affect men, women, and humanity as a whole. Guests have included Shawn Mendes, Alok Vaid-Menon, Jay Shetty, Glennon Doyle, Matthew McConaughey, Emmanuel Acho and more.
In 2022, Baldoni released his second book on masculinity, Boys Will Be Human: A Get-Real Gut-Check Guide to Becoming the Strongest, Kindest, Bravest Person You Can Be, catered to middle grade and high school boys, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller.
Baldoni first rose to worldwide fame through his role as Rafael on The CW’s award-winning phenomenon “Jane the Virgin” opposite Gina Rodriguez, which spanned five seasons.
CHRISTY HALL (Producer, Writer), a New York City based playwright, moved to LA in 2017 when her original stage play turned screenplay, “Daddio,” was honored in the top 3 on The Black List. A year later, Christy’s original screenplay Get Home Safe was also listed in the top 3 on The Black List 2018. She was named one of Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch 2018 and went on to write, executive-produce and co-create the series “I Am Not Okay With This” for Netflix and 21 Laps, premiering in 2020.
Hall’s writing for stage includes “Yours, Isabel” (“Top Pick!” DC Theatre Scene; Best Play, DC’s Audience Choice Awards; “GO!” LA Weekly; “WOW!” Stage Scene LA), “To Quiet the Quiet” (“Pick of the Week,” LA Weekly; 2018-19 Woodward/Newman Drama Award Winner), “A Painted Window” (Selected project for the 2016 HB Studio Residency, NYC; Winner of four Pulsar Awards including Best Play and Best Original Script), “Trails” (New York Musical Theatre Festival winner for Best Music, the Stage Entertainment USA Development Award, and runner-up for Audience Choice Award), and “Home” (Invited work of the 2016 Adirondack Theatre Festival and the Bloomington Playwrights’ Project in December 2016).
Upcoming projects include the adaptations of Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon for Vertigo and Village Roadshow, and Sony Pictures’s The Husband’s Secret based on Liane Moriarty’s No. 1 New York Times bestseller.
Christy’s feature directorial debut on her original script, Daddio, starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, was released by Sony Pictures Classics on June 28th, 2023.
