Justin Baldoni's $400M lawsuit vs Blake Lively dismissed after missing deadline

Justin Baldoni’s $400 million extortion and defamation lawsuit against his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and The New York Times has officially closed after the actor-director missed a court-imposed deadline to appeal his case.

According to the Oct. 31 order obtained by E! News, Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios filed to file an amended complaint.

The plaintiffs also "failed to respond" to an Oct. 17 show cause order issued to all parties asking why final judgment should not be entered. The BBC reported that only Lively answered, asking for final judgment to be declared.

The decision comes after US District Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Baldoni’s complaint in June for lack of merit in his defamation allegations.

Despite the latest order, Baldoni retains the right to appeal the judgment once the court rules on motions concerning Lively’s request to recover legal fees.

Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni and Jamey Heath of Wayfarer Studios, the producer of It Ends with Us, in December 2024, accusing them of running a smear campaign against her.

In her complaint, Lively accused Baldoni and Heath of telling her about their past sexual relationships and "previous porn addiction." Heath also allegedly showed Lively a video of his wife naked and giving birth. Baldoni and Heath likewise supposedly entered Lively's makeup trailer without permission, "including when she was breastfeeding her infant child." Lively also recalled Baldoni claiming he could communicate with the dead, including her father, Ernie Lively. She found it "off-putting and violative."

The New York Times later published a report on Dec. 21, 2024 titled 'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, which used excerpts from alleged text messages and emails that Lively obtained through a subpoena and detailed the work of crisis management firm TAG PR for Baldoni, including allegedly planting negative stories in the media.

Baldoni called the accusations in the report "categorically false" in response, releasing videos from production in an attempt to debunk Lively's claims and a website containing his complaint and a timeline of events.

The trial for the Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al. case is slated for March 2026.