Box Office Milestone: ‘It Ends With Us’ Is Top-Grossing Romantic Drama Since 2018’s ‘A Star is Born’
It Ends With Us continues to make history at the global box office.
The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s bestselling book about a woman whose fairy-tale marriage turns abusive has amassed more than $309 million in global ticket sales to become the top-grossing romantic drama since 2018’s Oscar-nominated A Star is Born, which earned $436.4 million globally, not adjusted for inflation. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed, star in the movie.
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To provide further perspective, It Ends With Us has earned more globally than such female-fueled hits as Sony’s 2023 romantic-comedy Anyone But You ($220.2 million), Warner Bros.’ 2018 romantic comedy-drama Crazy Rich Asians ($239.3 million), 20th Century Fox’s 2014 romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars ($307.2 million) and Warners’ 2016 romantic drama Me Before You ($208.4 million).
It Ends With Us stars Lively as Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood watching her father abuse her mother to embark on a new life in Boston and fulfill a lifelong dream of opening her own flower shop. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to break the cycle of violence.
It Ends With Us is also the latest in a string of Sony movies targeting females, a demo the studio believes is underserved. In addition to the Sydney Sweeney-Glenn Powell starrer Anyone But You — the highest-grossing R-rated comedy globally since 2016 — Sony’s slate includes 2022’s The Woman King, 2022’s Where the Crawdads Sing and Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-winning Little Women in 2019. And it recently won a bidding war for Margot Robbie’s first-post Barbie project, A Big Beautiful Bold Journey.
While It Ends With Us has achieved rarefied status at the box office, the movie ignited a social media firestorm over are a rift between Lively and Baldoni during filming that became apparent in the lead up to the film’s opening on Aug. 9 when Lively, Hoover and many in the cast took photos separately from Baldoni at the New York premiere. (Around the same time, he hired PR crisis communications exec Melissa Nathan.)
Many have taken aim at Lively, despite reports that some cast and crewmembers, including Lively, felt uncomfortable over Baldoni’s behavior on set, including when he reportedly asked about her weight and whether a back injury would be jeopardized by lifting her. (When asked whether Baldoni would want to direct a sequel, he said that Lively appeared ready for the job.)
Separately, some on social media claimed Lively did not take the movie’s subject matter of domestic abuse seriously enough, though she spoke about it often on the press tour and provided a link to various resources days after the film opened on Aug. 9.
The noise became so loud that Sony took the highly unusual step of speaking out in support of Lively, a producer on the film whose preferred cut is playing in theaters, as well as the other women who brought the movie to the big screen.
“Blake, Colleen and so many women put so much effort into this remarkable movie, working selflessly from the start to ensure that such an important subject matter was handled with care. Audiences love the movie. Blake’s passion and commitment to advancing the conversation around domestic violence is commendable,” Sony Pictures Entertainment Chair-CEO Tony Vinciquerra told The Hollywood Reporter on Aug. 14. “We love working with Blake, and we want to do 12 more movies with her.”
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