The highly-anticipated film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's hit book It Ends With Us finally has a release date. Fans who can't wait to see the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni-led flick should mark their calendars for Feb. 9, 2024, The Hollywood Reporter shares.
Videos by Wide Open Country
The movie, produced by Sony Pictures and Wayfarer Studios, reportedly began filming in May, but production was stalled by the Hollywood writers' strike. The publication reports that production is set to resume after the strike is over.
It Ends With Us follows the story of a character named Lily (Lively) who moves to Boston and meets a neurosurgeon by the name of Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). The movie also stars Brandon Sklenar — who starred in Yellowstone prequel 1923 — as Lily's old love with whom she soon reconnects.
Early in the production process, there was some chatter among fans regarding the casting choices of Lively and Baldoni's lead characters. Some fans argued that the chosen actors were too old to play the fictional characters, who are written as ages 23 and 30. Hoover cleared up this issue at her Book Bonanza event, during which she admitted to making an error about the characters' ages in the book.
"Back when I wrote It Ends With Us, the new adult [genre] was very popular," she said, according to Today. "You were writing college-age characters. That's what I was contracted to do."
"I didn't know that neurosurgeons went to school for 50 years," she says. "There's not a 20-something neurosurgeon."
"As I started making this movie, I'm like, 'We need to age them out because I messed up,'" she added. "So, that's my fault."
Hoover released It Ends With Us on August 2, 2016, and it soon became a literary hit, selling more than one million copies worldwide by 2019. It experienced a resurgence in popularity after receiving attention from creators on TikTok in 2021, and in January 2022, it reached No. 1 on the New York Times best sellers list.