Sony Pictures Ent.
One of the biggest surprises of the summer movie season is the amazing box office performance by the Sony romantic drama "It Ends With Us."
Based on Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel, Blake Lively stars as a florist named Lily Bloom. Her relationship with neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) seems like a fairytale until he becomes abusive. Things get more complicated when Lily's first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), reenters her life.
After an impressive $50 million opening in the second weekend at the box office in August, the movie sparked national attention when reports surfaced that Lively and Baldoni, the movie's director, clashed on set.
They ultimately promoted the movie separately. That followed with Lively receiving backlash when 2016 footage surfaced of her being rude to a journalist during a junket interview for "Café Society."
Despite the negative press, audiences have continued to show up for the $25 million-budgeted drama. It hit the $100 million milestone at the domestic box office on Tuesday and the $200 million worldwide mark on Thursday, making it the highest-grossing romantic drama since 2018's "A Star is Born."
"It Ends With Us" has become a box office hit for three reasons. Let's examine them.
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Lively, who is also a producer on the movie, went directly to the book's fans to get them excited for its big screen adaptation.
In mid-June, just under two months before the movie's opening weekend, Lively, Hoover, and Sklenar attended the Book Bonanza festival in Grapevine, Texas, as its opening keynote. The film was then screened for 2,000-plus attendees the following night.
In July, Sony also screened the movie to over 300 book influencers, capitalizing on Hoover's popularity with the BookTok crowd. This was followed by Lively and Hoover doing a livestream Q&A through Instagram's Creators page, which has 18.3 million followers.
Targeted marketing to book lovers helped fuel the movie's impressive $50 million opening. But it was attention to the behind-the-scenes drama that gave it box office legs.
Nicole Rivelli/Sony Pictures Ent.
The old saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," which certainly was the case with the controversy surrounding "It Ends With Us" after the movie opened.
The reports of Lively and Baldoni clashing, the movie having two different cuts (with Lively showing her "preferred" cut at Book Bonanza), and news of Lively's husband Ryan Reynolds rewriting the opening scene didn't push audiences away but made them more interested in seeing it—perhaps even seeing it again to try to catch if any friction between Lively and Baldoni found its way into the final cut.
"History has taught us controversy often serves to enhance awareness and interest and thus can have a positive effect on the box office," Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Business Insider.
Who can forget the controversies surrounding "Titanic" and "The Passion of the Christ" before they opened?
Reports of James Cameron's demanding direction on set led to "Titanic" becoming, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made while criticism of extremely violent scenes and claims of biblical inaccuracies plagued "Passion of the Christ." Still, both became huge box office earners. More recent examples are the successes of "Joker," which was criticized for how it depicted mental illness, and "Sound of Freedom," which faced claims it sensationalized child trafficking.
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An early August release can lead to box office glory if you have a title different from the usual blockbusters of the season.
By the time "It Ends With Us" opened, moviegoers had already gone to see the big event titles of the summer: "Bad Boys: Ride or Die," "Inside Out 2," "Despicable Me 4," "Twisters," and "Deadpool & Wolverine." It was time for a change, and "In Ends With Us" was right there.
Sony should also say thank you to "Deadpool & Wolverine." Though the film studio covered getting the word out to fans of the book, for those who have no clue who Colleen Hoover is, they saw Lively alongside Reynolds on the red carpet and heard her voice as Ladypool in the movie. We wouldn't be shocked if couples who went to see "Deadpool & Wolverine" then went to see "In Ends With Us." (Compromise is the key to any successful relationship.)
"The combined star power of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds certainly provided a boost," noted Dergarabedian, though he believes praise for the surprise success of "It Ends With Us" should go to the book's fans.
"It proved once again that while a movie may fly under the radar for some, a fan-based powerhouse such as 'It Ends With Us' shows the power of a best-selling novel to draw fans from the page to the big screen," he added.
