Justin Baldoni sues Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for $400 million

Actor and director Justin Baldoni has hit back at Blake Lively, his co-star in the film It Ends With Us, by filing a lawsuit against her and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

It comes after Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni in December, alleging sexual harassment and that he had campaigned to “destroy” his reputation.

Now Baldoni has responded by suing for $400 million (£326 million) in damages for civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

In response, Lively’s legal team described the trial as “another chapter in the abuser’s playbook.”

In the latest stage of their bitter legal battle, lawyers for Baldoni, 40, claimed that Lively and her team made a “deceptive attempt to destroy him.”

Her lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said the actress and her partners released “grossly altered, unsubstantiated, new and falsified information” to the media.

He also said Lively and her team had “attempted to destroy reputations and livelihoods for heinous and selfish reasons.”

The dispute stems from the production of It Ends With Us, adapted from a novel about domestic violence by Colleen Hoover.

Released last August, the film was a box office success, grossing more than $350 million (£280 million) worldwide.

But it emerged during the press tour that all was not well between the co-stars, who were not pictured together on the red carpet at the New York premiere, with Baldoni not even having one one in London.

Four months after the film’s release, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni, accusing him and the head of her production company Wayfarer of sexual harassment as well as “other concerning behavior” and a “hostile work environment.” on the set.

Lively’s complaint went further, claiming that Baldoni and his crisis management team deliberately set out to ruin her online reputation.

Baldoni’s legal team told the BBC at the time that the allegations were “categorically false” and said they had hired a crisis manager because Lively had threatened to derail the film if her demands were not met .

Now, Baldoni claims in his 179-page complaint that he is not at fault and that the high-profile battle is “not a case of celebrities sniping at each other in the press.”

“When the plaintiffs have their day in court, the jury will recognize that even the most powerful celebrity cannot bend the truth to their will,” it reads.

In their response, Lively’s legal team said, “It’s an old story: a woman comes forward with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the attacker attempts to turn the tables on the victim.”

The statement added that Baldoni and Wayfarer were “attempting to shift the narrative toward Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she had taken creative control and steered the casting away from Mr. Baldoni.”

“The evidence will show that the actors and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer.”

The statement concluded: “The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint and it will fail.”