Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Maybe everybody should be paying Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to be doing opposite approach promotion for their films and to attend the premier in separate rooms from now on if that gets you to $350M. Someone should try it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book had over ten million sales - that was a bigger draw than BL

Note that's total book sales since it's release date in 2016 - so $10M across nearly 10 years. That's not even Gone Girl numbers btw (20M), nowhere near Harry Potter stuff or The Hunger Games. Even The Fault in Our Stars and The Girl on the Train were 23 million. At 10 million you are in Me Before You (12 million) and The Lovely Bones (10 million) and those films only grossed about $50M each. The only book adaptation I see with sales of $10M where the film came in at kinda similar numbers was The Help, where book sales were also around 10M and box office was around $221M. If you consider Gone Girl similar with 2x as many book sales, that film grossed about $350M, but that starred fricking Affleck and Pike, directed by David Fincher for pete's sake. I really don't think this came down to the book's popularity, although I can see why you'd like to position it as such.

The Girl on the Train grossed $173M, and that was with Emily Blunt (and the same director that did The Help!). So I really don't think the crazy high $350M was from rabid Hoover fans.

What’s your point? I think the negative press surrounding this is attracting more people now.

But the film premiered long before the suit was filed and made most of its box office before the facts of the Baldoni/Lively fight really came to be known. Seems like something went right for this crazy success story and I'd like to know what that was. So many people in here are attacking Lively for her promotion of the film, but I don't think Hoover or Baldoni possibly got them to $350 million. And if Lively was really as much of a failure in front of all of America as Baldoni supporters in this thread position her as, then the film should have flopped or just done $25 or even $50 mil like Baldoni's Five Feet Apart. Doesn't seem like Lively's promotional efforts failed at all, frankly. This movie was a giant and unexpected box office success.

Good. Same as Twilight and Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. This is irrelevant anyway, who cares how successful the movie was and why? Blake WAS a bit more popular perhaps prior to this lawsuit.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

This is unfounded PR hype.

So she is a fashion icon and a bunch of 38 year old suburban women will run out and buy Blake's wonderful fashion? Who pays attention to magazine photos anymore? Also who in regular America is trying to dress like a Hollywood actress. That's something teenage girls do, not married moms with full time jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I didn't know about any of this tbh (did not know she doesn't have a stylist, what?!) and maybe this fashion angle could be getting at where some of this extra crazy box office came from. I know there was a focus on what people were saying were bad fashion choices at the very beginning of the shoot, so maybe people really did care about what the fashion in the film would look like and went for that angle. September cover of Vogue (a big get) and the Met Ball stuff was also news to me. Who knows whether Lively will be popular again in the same way going forward, but maybe some of that fashion cred was responsible for some of these numbers, along with the overseas angle. I would love to see some analysis of the "why" for these numbers somewhere. If everyone really hated Lively so much, though, the movie really should have tanked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I mean, sure if you like tons of gaudy bangles and large chunky earrings, and colorful mismatched prints. It’s trying a little too hard and outdated but whatever floats your boat. With the huge hair, huge white teeth, huge silicone breasts…less is probably more. She’s like her bff TS, far from a style icon. This is partly why I fail to see Europeans following her, as they tend to have more sophisticated low key style generally.

[Anonymous]

I do think the success of the movie will be relevant because Baldoni will be arguing that negative sentiment toward Lively in August/September was "organic" but she'll be able to point to a lot of positive press that she generated through her promotion of the movie. Yes she also made mistakes but it's clear based on the success of the movie that, by and large, her promotional efforts were successful. When they try to say all the bad press was Lively's own fault, she'll be able to point to a lot of concrete efforts she made to boost her profile and the film to help sell it to audiences. And that while she was doing that, Baldoni and Wayfarer were paying PR professionals to try and tank her reputation online, even though that's actually an insane thing for a director and studio to do to the star of their own movie as the movie is being released.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The book had over ten million sales - that was a bigger draw than BL

Note that's total book sales since it's release date in 2016 - so $10M across nearly 10 years. That's not even Gone Girl numbers btw (20M), nowhere near Harry Potter stuff or The Hunger Games. Even The Fault in Our Stars and The Girl on the Train were 23 million. At 10 million you are in Me Before You (12 million) and The Lovely Bones (10 million) and those films only grossed about $50M each. The only book adaptation I see with sales of $10M where the film came in at kinda similar numbers was The Help, where book sales were also around 10M and box office was around $221M. If you consider Gone Girl similar with 2x as many book sales, that film grossed about $350M, but that starred fricking Affleck and Pike, directed by David Fincher for pete's sake. I really don't think this came down to the book's popularity, although I can see why you'd like to position it as such.

The Girl on the Train grossed $173M, and that was with Emily Blunt (and the same director that did The Help!). So I really don't think the crazy high $350M was from rabid Hoover fans.

What’s your point? I think the negative press surrounding this is attracting more people now.

But the film premiered long before the suit was filed and made most of its box office before the facts of the Baldoni/Lively fight really came to be known. Seems like something went right for this crazy success story and I'd like to know what that was. So many people in here are attacking Lively for her promotion of the film, but I don't think Hoover or Baldoni possibly got them to $350 million. And if Lively was really as much of a failure in front of all of America as Baldoni supporters in this thread position her as, then the film should have flopped or just done $25 or even $50 mil like Baldoni's Five Feet Apart. Doesn't seem like Lively's promotional efforts failed at all, frankly. This movie was a giant and unexpected box office success.

Good. Same as Twilight and Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. This is irrelevant anyway, who cares how successful the movie was and why? Blake WAS a bit more popular perhaps prior to this lawsuit.

What do you mean, who cares how successful the movie was and why???? How is the crazy success of this film irrelevant? Baldoni supporters keep saying that Lively is terrible at promotion, but the movie made 350 million dollars, coming out of nowhere. Romance dramas haven't seen numbers like that in six years. It sure wasn't Baldoni that got them there. So all the people saying that Lively completely blew the promotional efforts are, imho, completely wrong. She certainly didn't fail at them if the film made $350M, and maybe Sony/the PR firm was correct to suggest that they keep the discussions light.

In short: suck it, haters. $350M is a resounding success, you don't get to say the lead actress did the promotion wrong when the film grosses $350M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I didn't know about any of this tbh (did not know she doesn't have a stylist, what?!) and maybe this fashion angle could be getting at where some of this extra crazy box office came from. I know there was a focus on what people were saying were bad fashion choices at the very beginning of the shoot, so maybe people really did care about what the fashion in the film would look like and went for that angle. September cover of Vogue (a big get) and the Met Ball stuff was also news to me. Who knows whether Lively will be popular again in the same way going forward, but maybe some of that fashion cred was responsible for some of these numbers, along with the overseas angle. I would love to see some analysis of the "why" for these numbers somewhere. If everyone really hated Lively so much, though, the movie really should have tanked.

I think I've said this before on this board but I actually think the zany fashion in the movie probably did help drive box office because this specific type of movie costuming (using extremely colorful, eye-catching, and extremely high end fashion pieces mixed in surprising ways with lower end items) is a very time-tested approach. The Sex and the City franchise is built around it. People will go to those movies or watch that show specifically for the fashion, and not because they want to emulate the exact outfits. But because it's over the top and fun and a lot of women just enjoy looking at clothes in that way. The costume designer for IEWU also did the SATC prequel series as well as Gossip Girl and is well known for this kind of work.

People will laugh at it and say "that looks so stupid" but the truth is it gets people to buy tickets. Its an aestethic with a proven track record.

[Anonymous]

I think you all are missing her barbenheimer attempt. While not as successful as the Barbie/Oppenheimer mashup, Blake and Ryan used the same strategy and promoted IEWU and Deadpool together. That probably helped a lot. Could also be why Blake wanted Justin nowhere to be found—she wanted Ryan out front as her leading man for crossover promo purposes. I’m sure she could’ve just said that instead of being cruel. Baldoni wants to make money off of this as much as anyone, and I’m sure she could’ve just said here’s the strategy and I’m going to promote this hard with Ryan. I’m sure Baldoni would’ve fallen back, but he didn’t need to fall all the way to the basement lol.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I mean, sure if you like tons of gaudy bangles and large chunky earrings, and colorful mismatched prints. It’s trying a little too hard and outdated but whatever floats your boat. With the huge hair, huge white teeth, huge silicone breasts…less is probably more. She’s like her bff TS, far from a style icon. This is partly why I fail to see Europeans following her, as they tend to have more sophisticated low key style generally.

Lol to the idea that Europeans as a group have "sophisticated, low key" style. American fashion is much more stripped down and low key when compared to what comes out of Europe, with the excess of the couture houses as well as all the avant garde fashion that comes out of London/Paris/Copenhagen. European fashion is not low key at all. Sophistication is in the eye of the beholder.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The book had over ten million sales - that was a bigger draw than BL

Note that's total book sales since it's release date in 2016 - so $10M across nearly 10 years. That's not even Gone Girl numbers btw (20M), nowhere near Harry Potter stuff or The Hunger Games. Even The Fault in Our Stars and The Girl on the Train were 23 million. At 10 million you are in Me Before You (12 million) and The Lovely Bones (10 million) and those films only grossed about $50M each. The only book adaptation I see with sales of $10M where the film came in at kinda similar numbers was The Help, where book sales were also around 10M and box office was around $221M. If you consider Gone Girl similar with 2x as many book sales, that film grossed about $350M, but that starred fricking Affleck and Pike, directed by David Fincher for pete's sake. I really don't think this came down to the book's popularity, although I can see why you'd like to position it as such.

The Girl on the Train grossed $173M, and that was with Emily Blunt (and the same director that did The Help!). So I really don't think the crazy high $350M was from rabid Hoover fans.

What’s your point? I think the negative press surrounding this is attracting more people now.

But the film premiered long before the suit was filed and made most of its box office before the facts of the Baldoni/Lively fight really came to be known. Seems like something went right for this crazy success story and I'd like to know what that was. So many people in here are attacking Lively for her promotion of the film, but I don't think Hoover or Baldoni possibly got them to $350 million. And if Lively was really as much of a failure in front of all of America as Baldoni supporters in this thread position her as, then the film should have flopped or just done $25 or even $50 mil like Baldoni's Five Feet Apart. Doesn't seem like Lively's promotional efforts failed at all, frankly. This movie was a giant and unexpected box office success.

Good. Same as Twilight and Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. This is irrelevant anyway, who cares how successful the movie was and why? Blake WAS a bit more popular perhaps prior to this lawsuit.

What do you mean, who cares how successful the movie was and why???? How is the crazy success of this film irrelevant? Baldoni supporters keep saying that Lively is terrible at promotion, but the movie made 350 million dollars, coming out of nowhere. Romance dramas haven't seen numbers like that in six years. It sure wasn't Baldoni that got them there. So all the people saying that Lively completely blew the promotional efforts are, imho, completely wrong. She certainly didn't fail at them if the film made $350M, and maybe Sony/the PR firm was correct to suggest that they keep the discussions light.

In short: suck it, haters. $350M is a resounding success, you don't get to say the lead actress did the promotion wrong when the film grosses $350M.

I don’t care how much the movie made, I still have no desire to see it. Plenty of crap movies make money and it’s not because of one specific actor in the film, it’s a combination of many factors. Yes, Blake has fans, possibly less now than before, I have no idea, but it still doesn’t change the fact that she lied. The main issue here isn’t how popular Blake is, or thinks she is, it’s how she tried to ruin Justin’s reputation. It doesn’t matter how many fans she has, she is a liar.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I mean, sure if you like tons of gaudy bangles and large chunky earrings, and colorful mismatched prints. It’s trying a little too hard and outdated but whatever floats your boat. With the huge hair, huge white teeth, huge silicone breasts…less is probably more. She’s like her bff TS, far from a style icon. This is partly why I fail to see Europeans following her, as they tend to have more sophisticated low key style generally.

Lol to the idea that Europeans as a group have "sophisticated, low key" style. American fashion is much more stripped down and low key when compared to what comes out of Europe, with the excess of the couture houses as well as all the avant garde fashion that comes out of London/Paris/Copenhagen. European fashion is not low key at all. Sophistication is in the eye of the beholder.

Europeans in general are not wearing avant garde high fashion couture on the daily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you all are missing her barbenheimer attempt. While not as successful as the Barbie/Oppenheimer mashup, Blake and Ryan used the same strategy and promoted IEWU and Deadpool together. That probably helped a lot. Could also be why Blake wanted Justin nowhere to be found—she wanted Ryan out front as her leading man for crossover promo purposes. I’m sure she could’ve just said that instead of being cruel. Baldoni wants to make money off of this as much as anyone, and I’m sure she could’ve just said here’s the strategy and I’m going to promote this hard with Ryan. I’m sure Baldoni would’ve fallen back, but he didn’t need to fall all the way to the basement lol.

I think Lively didn't want to appear on red carpets with Justin because they simply hate each other, full stop. Agree she was trying to creat a Barbenheimer moment with the Deadpool movie but I think she would have done that even if she and Baldoni were getting along great and doing red carpets together. I don't think she refused to be seen with him because she was trying to put Reynolds front and center; I thinks she just genuinely hates him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I’m really curious how this movie made so much money. It’s currently grossed over $350 million, which is a crazy amount for a domestic violence film. Baldwin has come nowhere close to these numbers — Five Feet Apart grossed 45 million but Clouds grossed far less, I can’t even find real numbers but maybe only $2 million? Lively’s A Simple Favor (I) with Kendrick grossed about $100 million. I don’t think Hoover’s ever come close to this before. Was the success in fact from all the controversy? Was Reynold’s promotion firm really successful here? $350 million is a lot of viewers.

Maybe this was the plan all along, sort of reverse psychology. Even negative attention is better than no attention.

No,no. You guys are missing that Colleen Hoover‘s book was hugely popular. People have been waiting for this movie to be made for years and there was a lot of attention on it as soon as it was announced. She has a ginormous fan base. Another one of her books, verity, is being made with Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.

I personally don’t understand the popularity of the books, but she is a huge deal. This was a really covered role that Blake scored.

Sorry, should say coveted role.

I mean, okay, but Come. On. Three past Hoover books have been made into movies: Ugly Love, Confess, and Maybe Someday, and none of them have made anywhere near this much money. I don't think I've heard of them, even. Not that fans may not have been looking out for this one, particularly, but are you really saying that would get the movie to $350M? I think It Ends With Us sold one or two million last year - that's not really getting into the half-of-a-Marvel-movie where the film's gross wound up, as far as I'm aware.

Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner. SHe has her pick of any roles. The fact that she’s doing verity means these movies are going to be seen. I think you are really over estimating Blake here and really underestimating the machine that is Colleen Hoover.

It's being made by Amazon studios, though, and it's not yet clear if it's getting a theater release. It may be streaming only. Hathaway's last movie (The Idea of You) was a streaming-only feature on Prime, and she also was one of the big names who did an episode of their Modern Love series a few years ago (Tina Fey also did an episode, there were other A-list type people in it). She also starred in that WeCrashed series about the WeWork people -- I don't think that was Amazon though, maybe Max? Still a streaming product.

Streaming makes it much harder to evaluate the market for actor's box office power these days. Lots of big stars do streaming-only movies and limited series these days, and the streamers spend HUGE money on those productions right now, so it can be quite lucrative for the creators involved. But unlike a film with a theater release, you never get the kind of clear numbers with streaming products -- the streamers don't even release a transparent list of top streamed shows or movies (they release these partial lists but it's often not even clear what they represent because there are lots of ways to count something as "viewed" that don't necessarily equate to a ticket sale in a movie theater).

All of which is not to say that Colleen Hoover is not a lucrative product right now -- obviously she's having a moment and studios like that her book adaptations have a build in audience. In fact the success of IEWU actually makes it more likely that Verity will get a theater release of some kind. But I also think you can argue that IEWU outperformed expectations even knowing it was a popular Hoover book with a decent following. One thing I will note is that international box office accounted for over 200m of its box office -- that's huge. I think Hoover might have a decent following in Europe, but also Lively went out of her way to go promote the film in London (attended the London premiere in person and paid for Ferrer to accompany her to it on Lively's own dime -- not sure if Lively also paid for her own travel/lodging for that premiere as well). I think you can argue that Lively played an important role in the success of the movie given it's international success, because of her willingness to go the extra mile on the promotional tour and also because of her recognizability to an international audience thanks to both Gossip Girl and her association with Reynolds. She's also a fashion darling and may receive more pressing Europe because of that -- her relationship with Vogue and certain designers (including Versace who did a lot of her clothes for the promotional tour for IEWU) is pretty well known among people interested in fashion.

She’s a fashion nightmare but ok

PP here and I personally don't like her style but that's beside the point. She's got good relationships with designers and fashion editors including a really good relationship with Vogue. She did the Vogue cover in September to coincide with the release of IEWU (the September issue comes out in August, and also is considered the most important issue of the year so the cover is a big get). She's hosted the Met Gala more than once and tends to be more involved and get better reviews than most celebrity hosts. She is a frequent front row guest at both Paris and New York fashion weeks and has attended Paris FW with Anna Wintour which is a weird special honor that tends to go to this very small group of actresses who Wintour dotes on (Emma Stone would be another actress in this group).

I find her personal fashion kind of obvious BUT it's true she famously does not work with a stylist and that she generally looks great on red carpets, which means she does know something because that's really hard to do -- not just because it requires understanding what looks good and how to put the whole look together, but it's also a logistics challenge because it means she has to have the relationships directly with designers and know how to manage the kind of political/interpersonal aspect of it which is more complicated than you might realize.

All of which is to say that Lively has some special attributes as an actress that would make her especially appealing from a box office standpoint for a movie with a primarily female audience in the 18-35 and 35-50 demographics -- those overlap perfectly with the audience for fashion content whether you are talking about Vogue magazine or In Style or just people who pay close attention to fashion blogs and red carpet events. And given IEWU's international box office, I would bet that her willingness to go abroad to promote the movie, to wear big name fashion and do red carpet events in London where it's going to get picked up by European fashion press who are already very familiar with her, translates to actual money for the studio in a very real way. Ever magazine article, blog post, and social media photo of Lively wearing big name fashion on a red carpet while promoting the movie is worth a lot of exposure that it could be hard to get with another actress. It's real value she brings to the project.

I didn't know about any of this tbh (did not know she doesn't have a stylist, what?!) and maybe this fashion angle could be getting at where some of this extra crazy box office came from. I know there was a focus on what people were saying were bad fashion choices at the very beginning of the shoot, so maybe people really did care about what the fashion in the film would look like and went for that angle. September cover of Vogue (a big get) and the Met Ball stuff was also news to me. Who knows whether Lively will be popular again in the same way going forward, but maybe some of that fashion cred was responsible for some of these numbers, along with the overseas angle. I would love to see some analysis of the "why" for these numbers somewhere. If everyone really hated Lively so much, though, the movie really should have tanked.

I think I've said this before on this board but I actually think the zany fashion in the movie probably did help drive box office because this specific type of movie costuming (using extremely colorful, eye-catching, and extremely high end fashion pieces mixed in surprising ways with lower end items) is a very time-tested approach. The Sex and the City franchise is built around it. People will go to those movies or watch that show specifically for the fashion, and not because they want to emulate the exact outfits. But because it's over the top and fun and a lot of women just enjoy looking at clothes in that way. The costume designer for IEWU also did the SATC prequel series as well as Gossip Girl and is well known for this kind of work.

People will laugh at it and say "that looks so stupid" but the truth is it gets people to buy tickets. Its an aestethic with a proven track record.

If anything people may have been curious to see what a train-wreck of fashion items Blake was wearing. I’ll admit I found her outfits quite entertaining to look at. Sort of like a circus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you all are missing her barbenheimer attempt. While not as successful as the Barbie/Oppenheimer mashup, Blake and Ryan used the same strategy and promoted IEWU and Deadpool together. That probably helped a lot. Could also be why Blake wanted Justin nowhere to be found—she wanted Ryan out front as her leading man for crossover promo purposes. I’m sure she could’ve just said that instead of being cruel. Baldoni wants to make money off of this as much as anyone, and I’m sure she could’ve just said here’s the strategy and I’m going to promote this hard with Ryan. I’m sure Baldoni would’ve fallen back, but he didn’t need to fall all the way to the basement lol.

I think Lively didn't want to appear on red carpets with Justin because they simply hate each other, full stop. Agree she was trying to creat a Barbenheimer moment with the Deadpool movie but I think she would have done that even if she and Baldoni were getting along great and doing red carpets together. I don't think she refused to be seen with him because she was trying to put Reynolds front and center; I thinks she just genuinely hates him.

Or maybe they didn’t want to compete with another attractive couple on the red carpet. Justin’s extremely handsome and Emily’s a natural beauty, despite the undereye bags.