Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So it's been established Justin/Wayfarer paid Jed $90,000 summer 2024, to do what exactly?

On 8/10/2024, someone on Baldoni's PR team texted:

"We've also started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan."

Isn't the crux of the case how they went about shining that (obviously negative) "spotlight" and whether it was defamatory and/or retaliatory?

Seems there's crucial evidence we haven't seen yet, but that the NYTimes did not misrepresent what happened.

I think whatever the crucial evidence is, we'll never see it. Wayfarer, TAG, and Wallace switched to Signal chats with auto-delete at some point, some things have been deemed A/C privilege due to Freedman's involvement, and it's clear Lively's team is frustrated in that they believe that this people talked in more detail about exactly what Jed did for them, and if they had access to those communications it would be damning for the retaliation claim, but they will never actually have access to those conversations as they may not exist in any recorded format or be irretrievable as privileged.

We'll see what happens with the spoliation motion. I personally think it's unlikely to win the day but who knows.

I agree The NY Times article didn't misrepresent anything. The messages from Abel's phone are what they are. We may never know what of Lively's bad press/online sentiment were organic versus seeded and pushed by Wallace, but it's pretty obvious what Wayfarer's intention was and why they hired TAG and Wallace. It just might not be possible to prove exactly what they did and what impact it had. That's not so much exonerating for Wayfarer as a tidy get-out-of-jail-free card.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So it's been established Justin/Wayfarer paid Jed $90,000 summer 2024, to do what exactly?

On 8/10/2024, someone on Baldoni's PR team texted:

"We've also started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan."

Isn't the crux of the case how they went about shining that (obviously negative) "spotlight" and whether it was defamatory and/or retaliatory?

Seems there's crucial evidence we haven't seen yet, but that the NYTimes did not misrepresent what happened.

Funny in Justin‘s depo he said all he knows is that Jed wrote lots of reports. But there are no reports.

I saw that. So weird. I guess they were written in disappearing ink? Just like those disappearing Signal chats they had to discuss Jed's work.

[Anonymous]

Blake and Ryan are box office poison at this point. And Swifties have turned on phony ass Taylor too. The grift is up for these evil frauds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So it's been established Justin/Wayfarer paid Jed $90,000 summer 2024, to do what exactly?

Wow, a whole 90k? That is totally a smoking gun. 90k to get the whole internet to hate Blake Lively and her obnoxious zesty ass husband.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lively's cut was the winner, for a reason, and studio execs gushed to her about the success of the film. Do you think any of this helps Baldoni, who has zero projects now in the works per imdb? Studio execs wanted to muzzle him from doing press promo, not because of Lively but because of his tendency to say inappropriate and off-putting things. They had to cut the tape of one of his interviews.

From People:
Justin Baldoni was labeled a "moron" by a studio executive over remarks he allegedly made in an interview promoting It Ends With Us.

An alleged email sent by Danni Maggin, a senior marketing executive at Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Aug. 5, 2024, shows the marketing team took issue with Baldoni's remarks in one interview.

"... Justin is basically alluding to 'raping' Atlas out of Lily when talking to the Dallas Morning News. We cut the tape but he is a moron," Maggin wrote in the email, recently unsealed as part of Blake Lively's ongoing legal battle with Baldoni.

Maggin then appeared to refer to Josh Greenstein, then-president of Sony Pictures‘ Motion Group, alleging Greenstein said that director-star Baldoni, 42, "shouldn't do any more press but he has a lot left so maybe we can talk asap."

Perfect example of weird bot behavior.

Her cut was the low scoring one, bozo!

Her cut was the one execs selected, largely because Colleen felt it captured her vision, and the one that earned hundreds of millions of dollars, bozo! From a business perspective, Baldoni was a pathetic failure. In addition to being cut out of the social network and promotion because no one wanted to hear any more of his inappropriate remarks. He's the one who'll never work again.

Meh, Sony likely caused themselves to lose tens of millions of dollars because they ignored normal business practices and went with the cut markedly less popular with audiences. Then they lost more potential profit when Blake did stupid things like make the “bring your florals” comment. That’s what you get when you give in to a celebrity pressure campaign.

But somehow not an issue when Baldoni, who played the abuser, was appearing at fun and sexy pop up flower shops...

There are a lot of things to argue but I have never understood this one - Baldoni was also out in his floral shirts going to flower shops and making bouquets and focusing on the florals - same as Blake. We have it in writing that this was the intended marketing strategy so they were both doing it. I don't get why it is held against Blake. All the cast were told to market it this way and to stay away from the DV and focus on the florals and they did.

This came up in multiple other depositions with other women involved with the movie, as a reason they refused to do press with Baldoni. Colleen and Isabella definitely mentioned it, I can't remember if Jenny did. They say that when Blake started getting attacked for making light of the DV themes in the movie with the whole "grab your friends, wear your florals" campaign, they were angry that neither Justin nor Wayfarer made any effort to defend Blake or the movie, especially when he had also been part of the exact same marketing campaign and had appeared in the "pop up" floral shop with Colleen and been wearing florals to press appearances like everyone else. Then when Justin started explicitly discussing DV in his interviews, when everyone else involved had been told by Sony NOT to emphasize the DV aspect of the film or make it sound like it was a "DV movie", they felt he was trying to show them ALL up. Not just Blake. Both Colleen and Isabella mentioned this was a major factor in them refusing to appear with Baldoni and Wayfarer at the premiere. The felt personally harmed by Justin's actions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blake and Ryan are box office poison at this point. And Swifties have turned on phony ass Taylor too. The grift is up for these evil frauds.

Yes we know you believe that, dear. Run along and let the grownups talk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blake and Ryan are box office poison at this point. And Swifties have turned on phony ass Taylor too. The grift is up for these evil frauds.

Swifties, by definition, have not turned on Taylor. There may be a handful of people who will ditch Taylor over this but the vast majority don't care, will buy her next album, wait for news of her wedding on pins and needles, and sell a kidney to get tickets to her next tour. She simply has too many fans, and too rabid a fan base, for something like this to make a dent in her dominance. It's like thinking that all the public drama the Beatles went through in the 70s would somehow undermine their legacy or make them unmarketable later on. Nope. They all went on to make tons more money on solo projects, they are considered one of the singularly greatest bands of the 20th century, and all the drama with their politics, the drug issues, the stuff with Yoko and the ultimate break up of the band? It's all just part of their lore now. That's the level Taylor is at -- this is truly nothing for her. She is untouchable.

I think Ryan will ultimately be fine and this will be a footnote in his career. People might view him a little differently but he'll continue to act and produce and I think it will get absorbed into his overall persona fairly easily.

This will what people remember about Blake for the rest of her life. But it will also be one Baldoni is known for as well. Neither of them will ever shake it off (heh heh heh).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blake and Ryan are box office poison at this point. And Swifties have turned on phony ass Taylor too. The grift is up for these evil frauds.

Yes we know you believe that, dear. Run along and let the grownups talk.

Can a bot be a grownup? Just asking, dear.

[Anonymous]

It is very clear that Jed was hired to do damage to Blake. That was his job and I am pretty sure that kind of thing happens a lot - there is a ton of manipulation of online content to bias and misinform readers. Whether they use bots or people / accounts, it isn't that hard to shift a narrative. You see it on many posts on reddit about all kinds of things. Someone will post as though they have some kind of insider information and boom, the tide turns. Or they spam the same misinformation or posts or pictures until there is a familiarity bias. There are thousands of ways to bias people.

It does seem as though Jed and co were very good at covering their tracks. Makes sense - he is probably tech savvy and got this job because he has a track record of being good at it. For him it wouldn't have been personal - he likely couldn't have cared less about the movie or the players, he was just hired to make Blake look bad and Baldoni look good and he did it.

You would think with modern technology, there are people who could recover everything that has not yet surfaced - but maybe there are ways to permanently delete things and make them non recoverable.

Everyone has a PR team that is working overtime online when there is an issue coming out. In this case, Wayfarer needed a fast change in reader view, so they hired someone specifically to do that.

I once watched an interview or TV program with Lil Nas X. He by himself studied up on how best to influence online and was able to single handedly get his song to go viral and to influence the trajectory of his song. It was a pretty interesting and detailed plan. And he was one guy who learned this by himself and did it by himself just with a ton of very strategic posting. Imagine someone who does it for a living and has a team of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blake and Ryan are box office poison at this point. And Swifties have turned on phony ass Taylor too. The grift is up for these evil frauds.

Swifties, by definition, have not turned on Taylor. There may be a handful of people who will ditch Taylor over this but the vast majority don't care, will buy her next album, wait for news of her wedding on pins and needles, and sell a kidney to get tickets to her next tour. She simply has too many fans, and too rabid a fan base, for something like this to make a dent in her dominance. It's like thinking that all the public drama the Beatles went through in the 70s would somehow undermine their legacy or make them unmarketable later on. Nope. They all went on to make tons more money on solo projects, they are considered one of the singularly greatest bands of the 20th century, and all the drama with their politics, the drug issues, the stuff with Yoko and the ultimate break up of the band? It's all just part of their lore now. That's the level Taylor is at -- this is truly nothing for her. She is untouchable.

I think Ryan will ultimately be fine and this will be a footnote in his career. People might view him a little differently but he'll continue to act and produce and I think it will get absorbed into his overall persona fairly easily.

This will what people remember about Blake for the rest of her life. But it will also be one Baldoni is known for as well. Neither of them will ever shake it off (heh heh heh).

I agree about Ryan and Blake. Ryan has enough material out there to sustain a career. Who knows if the marriage will last though.
To me, for Taylor, this is different from the Beatles because the Beatles had music as their primary money making vehicle where as Taylor has marketing herself (her musical diaries, her fashion etc) as her primary money making vehicle with the music taking the back burner. Therefore this scandal puts a dent in the “wholesome best friend girl next door” image she tries to cultivate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lively's cut was the winner, for a reason, and studio execs gushed to her about the success of the film. Do you think any of this helps Baldoni, who has zero projects now in the works per imdb? Studio execs wanted to muzzle him from doing press promo, not because of Lively but because of his tendency to say inappropriate and off-putting things. They had to cut the tape of one of his interviews.

From People:
Justin Baldoni was labeled a "moron" by a studio executive over remarks he allegedly made in an interview promoting It Ends With Us.

An alleged email sent by Danni Maggin, a senior marketing executive at Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Aug. 5, 2024, shows the marketing team took issue with Baldoni's remarks in one interview.

"... Justin is basically alluding to 'raping' Atlas out of Lily when talking to the Dallas Morning News. We cut the tape but he is a moron," Maggin wrote in the email, recently unsealed as part of Blake Lively's ongoing legal battle with Baldoni.

Maggin then appeared to refer to Josh Greenstein, then-president of Sony Pictures‘ Motion Group, alleging Greenstein said that director-star Baldoni, 42, "shouldn't do any more press but he has a lot left so maybe we can talk asap."

Perfect example of weird bot behavior.

Her cut was the low scoring one, bozo!

Her cut was the one execs selected, largely because Colleen felt it captured her vision, and the one that earned hundreds of millions of dollars, bozo! From a business perspective, Baldoni was a pathetic failure. In addition to being cut out of the social network and promotion because no one wanted to hear any more of his inappropriate remarks. He's the one who'll never work again.

Meh, Sony likely caused themselves to lose tens of millions of dollars because they ignored normal business practices and went with the cut markedly less popular with audiences. Then they lost more potential profit when Blake did stupid things like make the “bring your florals” comment. That’s what you get when you give in to a celebrity pressure campaign.

But somehow not an issue when Baldoni, who played the abuser, was appearing at fun and sexy pop up flower shops...

But he was also talking a lot about domestic violence and his nonprofit that Wayfarer ran, which is since been shut down, called no more.

Blake made some really bad decisions. Even Sony execs couldn’t believe that she announced her hairline in conjunction with the film. And has been discussed multiple times her and Ryan’s alcohol lines were promoted during pop-up events and she named an alcoholic drink after the abuser.

She also came across really poorly in interviews. People did not like when she flippantly and sarcastically responded to a very earnest question by an interviewer asking what would she say to women who wanted to share their stories with her. Her answer it was really awful and she knew it -as months later she was still lamenting about it in a text to Taylor Swift.

So yes, Baldoni might have gone on with the plan but his marketing and interviews did much less damage than Blake. He seemed to be able to talk about the nuance of the film when Blake really wanted it to be another Barbie up and oppenheimer because Ryan was also coming out with Deadpool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lively's cut was the winner, for a reason, and studio execs gushed to her about the success of the film. Do you think any of this helps Baldoni, who has zero projects now in the works per imdb? Studio execs wanted to muzzle him from doing press promo, not because of Lively but because of his tendency to say inappropriate and off-putting things. They had to cut the tape of one of his interviews.

From People:
Justin Baldoni was labeled a "moron" by a studio executive over remarks he allegedly made in an interview promoting It Ends With Us.

An alleged email sent by Danni Maggin, a senior marketing executive at Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Aug. 5, 2024, shows the marketing team took issue with Baldoni's remarks in one interview.

"... Justin is basically alluding to 'raping' Atlas out of Lily when talking to the Dallas Morning News. We cut the tape but he is a moron," Maggin wrote in the email, recently unsealed as part of Blake Lively's ongoing legal battle with Baldoni.

Maggin then appeared to refer to Josh Greenstein, then-president of Sony Pictures‘ Motion Group, alleging Greenstein said that director-star Baldoni, 42, "shouldn't do any more press but he has a lot left so maybe we can talk asap."

Perfect example of weird bot behavior.

Her cut was the low scoring one, bozo!

Her cut was the one execs selected, largely because Colleen felt it captured her vision, and the one that earned hundreds of millions of dollars, bozo! From a business perspective, Baldoni was a pathetic failure. In addition to being cut out of the social network and promotion because no one wanted to hear any more of his inappropriate remarks. He's the one who'll never work again.

Meh, Sony likely caused themselves to lose tens of millions of dollars because they ignored normal business practices and went with the cut markedly less popular with audiences. Then they lost more potential profit when Blake did stupid things like make the “bring your florals” comment. That’s what you get when you give in to a celebrity pressure campaign.

Regardless of how you feel about Blake or Justin, I think it's dubious to assert that Sony could have made more money with Justin's cut. The truth of the matter is that the actual cut of the movie is not what sold it -- it was the marketing campaign featuring a very recognizable actress (often alongside her very famous husband and friends) and a hugely popular author. That's why they went with Blake's cut. Because Blake and Colleen would sell the hell out of it, and they did. It's highly unlikely they would have gotten more money out Justin's cut, especially if releasing that one had meant that Blake phoned in promotion.

It was a short term gain though. they killed any hope for the sequel and Sony has been embarrassed and damaged by what has come out.

Considering Colleen Hoover’s next film regretting you also did about 100 million based on a less successful book and less known actors, they probably would have been okay with less box office sales plus a sequel plus their reputation intact.

Agree. For big companies like Sony, box office hits are a dime a dozen. The headache that is Blake is clearly not worth it to them, since neither they nor anyone else have offered her another role. They’re over Blake. She’s unhireable. On pause. Hathaway and Eva Mendes time. To use Sony’s own words.

The comparisons to Ann Hathaway and Eva Mendes are not unflattering to Blake, frankly. Ann Hathaway is A-list with plenty of roles these days. She "went away" for like two years after Les Mis because of overexposure which led to bizarre online hate. Her comeback movie was Interstellar, an acclaimed Christopher Nolan movie with a superstar cast. Mendes, meanwhile, wasn't so much forced to disappear as just kind of chose to stop acting and focus on being a mom. It doesn't sound like she enjoyed acting that much and she's said in interviews she doesn't think she was that good of an actress. She appears to have a perfectly nice life as a super wealthy lady with good kids and a good marriage to a highly successful actor.

I think Blake would honestly be fine with either of those outcomes.

Baldoni will never work in Hollywood again, except maybe on self-funded projects with Wayfarer, but they will never get mainstream actors to appear in their films ever again. Even if you accept that Blake was a nightmare to work with and think she's lying about the SH and retaliation, literally every deposition about the actual production of this movie is people saying "it was a mess, it was mismanaged, Justin was in over his head, Jamey didn't know what he was doing, the culture was weird, people were uncomfortable, the schedule was mismanaged, it was underinsured, etc. etc. etc." He will, as they say, never eat lunch in this town again.

It doesn’t seem like Blake will be happy with those outcomes. If she wanted to be a stay at home mom and just be wealthy and shop she could’ve done so. She launched a production company. She launched 2 drink lines, and she launched a hair care company. She’s trying to revive her movie career. It’s ridiculous to say that this doesn’t matter to her. She clearly had ambitions for herself and now she has really screwed that up.

The Anne Hathaway comparison was insane. Anne was a little over exposed and annoyed some people and needed to step back. She’s an award-winning actress and very well respected. She took time out and has come back just fine. Makes no sense to compare those two. At the peak of Anne’s decline there was never even one percent of the press that Blake is getting - there are no embarrassing texts and emails from Anne that we are all reading. It’s completely not comparable.

It annoys me that people keep saying Justin had no idea what he was doing. Colleen Hoover was a self publisher at the time and nobody was optioning her movies. He had the foresight years before others did that this could be a big project. He did the work to get the rights, he built the entire infrastructure of the movie and got it funded. Blake has never done anything near that accomplishment. we now see that there are three other movies in the works for Colleen Hoover, but Justin was the first and he was years ahead of the game. You gotta give him some credit for the success of the film. I’ll remind you that Blake was on set for 16 days. Maybe she directed some of the scenes that she was in but he clearly directed most of the film. And at one point, Colleen Hoover was very happy with the script, as Jamey Heath reminded her when he pointed out that he has text screenshots that he’d be happy to share with her.

Justin seems insufferable, but to act as if we would be having these conversations without his work is ridiculous. Blake has never produced one thing in her life and likely never will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lively's cut was the winner, for a reason, and studio execs gushed to her about the success of the film. Do you think any of this helps Baldoni, who has zero projects now in the works per imdb? Studio execs wanted to muzzle him from doing press promo, not because of Lively but because of his tendency to say inappropriate and off-putting things. They had to cut the tape of one of his interviews.

From People:
Justin Baldoni was labeled a "moron" by a studio executive over remarks he allegedly made in an interview promoting It Ends With Us.

An alleged email sent by Danni Maggin, a senior marketing executive at Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Aug. 5, 2024, shows the marketing team took issue with Baldoni's remarks in one interview.

"... Justin is basically alluding to 'raping' Atlas out of Lily when talking to the Dallas Morning News. We cut the tape but he is a moron," Maggin wrote in the email, recently unsealed as part of Blake Lively's ongoing legal battle with Baldoni.

Maggin then appeared to refer to Josh Greenstein, then-president of Sony Pictures‘ Motion Group, alleging Greenstein said that director-star Baldoni, 42, "shouldn't do any more press but he has a lot left so maybe we can talk asap."

Perfect example of weird bot behavior.

Her cut was the low scoring one, bozo!

Her cut was the one execs selected, largely because Colleen felt it captured her vision, and the one that earned hundreds of millions of dollars, bozo! From a business perspective, Baldoni was a pathetic failure. In addition to being cut out of the social network and promotion because no one wanted to hear any more of his inappropriate remarks. He's the one who'll never work again.

Meh, Sony likely caused themselves to lose tens of millions of dollars because they ignored normal business practices and went with the cut markedly less popular with audiences. Then they lost more potential profit when Blake did stupid things like make the “bring your florals” comment. That’s what you get when you give in to a celebrity pressure campaign.

But somehow not an issue when Baldoni, who played the abuser, was appearing at fun and sexy pop up flower shops...

There are a lot of things to argue but I have never understood this one - Baldoni was also out in his floral shirts going to flower shops and making bouquets and focusing on the florals - same as Blake. We have it in writing that this was the intended marketing strategy so they were both doing it. I don't get why it is held against Blake. All the cast were told to market it this way and to stay away from the DV and focus on the florals and they did.

This came up in multiple other depositions with other women involved with the movie, as a reason they refused to do press with Baldoni. Colleen and Isabella definitely mentioned it, I can't remember if Jenny did. They say that when Blake started getting attacked for making light of the DV themes in the movie with the whole "grab your friends, wear your florals" campaign, they were angry that neither Justin nor Wayfarer made any effort to defend Blake or the movie, especially when he had also been part of the exact same marketing campaign and had appeared in the "pop up" floral shop with Colleen and been wearing florals to press appearances like everyone else. Then when Justin started explicitly discussing DV in his interviews, when everyone else involved had been told by Sony NOT to emphasize the DV aspect of the film or make it sound like it was a "DV movie", they felt he was trying to show them ALL up. Not just Blake. Both Colleen and Isabella mentioned this was a major factor in them refusing to appear with Baldoni and Wayfarer at the premiere. The felt personally harmed by Justin's actions.

This is some immature bullshit and obviously not true.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think Ryan will be as fine as everyone thinks. Paramount recently canceled three films that they were going to work on with him. They also had the option to re-up a five-year contract to partner with him on future projects and instead they’re letting that expire at the end of this year.

Deadpool four is not in the works. I highly doubt another one will be made. Everyone made a stink of the 1.2 billion box office the last one made, but then it came out that with all of the extra budgeting the film cost 660 million to make. because studios have to split box office revenue with theaters, 50-50, it means that they made a little bit of money off of Deadpool, but it was hardly a huge hit for them. It’s unlikely they’re going to risk that kind of money again for so little reward.

This has hurt his image. He has a lot in the works and I’m sure financially he will be fine but you know that this bugs him. He’s done a lot to curate an image of a laid-back family man and now he’s coming off as a scheming egomaniac who insults people and goes on absurd power trips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So it's been established Justin/Wayfarer paid Jed $90,000 summer 2024, to do what exactly?

Wow, a whole 90k? That is totally a smoking gun. 90k to get the whole internet to hate Blake Lively and her obnoxious zesty ass husband.

I’m quite sure that Blake is paying her ex CIA social media guru at least $90,000 a month and has been doing so for well over a year.