'It Ends With Us's Marketing Dangerously Sidesteps the Film's Biggest Point (2024)

Editor's note: The below contains discussion of domestic violence.

The Big Picture

It Ends with Us centers around domestic violence, depicted through the protagonist's experiences with abuse.
Despite the film's potential to raise awareness, the marketing prioritizes rom-com aesthetics that don't accurately reflect the topic or respectfully approach domestic violence.
Despite It Ends with Us's success at the box office, the marketing strategy fails its audience and leads to a tonal disconnect and exploitation concerns.

Underneath the poster's floral edges and the plot-elusive debut trailer's Taylor Swift needle drop, It Ends with Us is about one thing and one thing only: domestic violence. Sony Pictures' new drama, directed by Justin Baldoni, who stars in the film alongside Blake Lively, is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover and adapted for the screen by Christy Hall. Hoover, a publishing phenomenon, partially based her bestseller on her mother's experiences as a domestic violence survivor. Despite being folded into the romance genre (a debatable classification), the novel's content is incontrovertible: It Ends with Us sits within the psychology of Lily Bloom (Lively), a young woman who confronts the irrevocable scars inflicted by domestic abuse and breaks the generational cycle.

One would hardly know as much from the marketing that has accompanied the highly anticipated film adaptation. None could fault those unfamiliar with Hoover's work for being confused by the press tour's prevailing mood: a sparkling parade of floral designer dresses, glittery pop-up shops, Lively launching her hair care line, and glamorized social media posts calling the movie "a good girls' night out" — as if a drama about domestic violence were 2024's answer to Barbie. At best, the tonal incongruity between the kitschy marketing and the actual film, which is an earnest — if imperfect — attempt to raise awareness about domestic violence, is irresponsible. At worst, the egregious lack of self-awareness minimizes the subject's severity and fails to respect an already underserved, disregarded, and acutely vulnerable community. How did we even get here?

It Ends With Us

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PG-13

Drama

Romance

‘It Ends with Us’ Has Been Marketed Like a Rom-Com

It Ends with Us is an intentional case of brand awareness fusion. Lively's individual celebrity, the popularity tied to Hoover's name, the romanticized aesthetics of a Hollywood budget, and a women-led demographic desperate for more stories favoring their experiences, afford It Ends with Us a uniquely wide-reaching platform. The production could emphasize messages of hope and empathy, direct audiences toward resources, organize fundraisers, or publicly donate to domestic violence charities; the potential is nearly limitless. By playing Lily Bloom and guiding creative choices as an executive producer, Lively, in particular, has a chance to promote change on a massive scale and the responsibility to respectfully represent the abuse survivors community. Any effort at depicting a fictionalized abuse scenario demands unflinching sensitivity, authenticity, and grace.

Instead, It Ends with Us's marketing feels like it's gone out of its way to side-step the true topic in favor of manufacturing the year's sleeper rom-com hit. Lively donned flowery dresses inspired by her character's profession as a florist for the press tour and various red-carpet events. She debuted her haircare line on August 4, the Sunday before It Ends with Us's theatrical debut, while her gourmet soda and alcohol brands, Betty Buzz and Betty Booze, hosted a "Betty Blooms" event sporting co*cktails inspired by the film. A pop-up invited fans to explore a recreation of Lily's shop as seen in the film, along with "custom giveaways**, unforgettable photo ops, and an exclusive AR experience," per the Westfield Century City mall's Instagram caption.

Even a sponsored Instagram post from the Verve Romance newsletter promoting a separate but similarly styled pop-up acknowledges It Ends with Us's partnership with the NO MORE Foundation, a non-profit organization "dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence" — only to then reference swag bags and advise readers to "Grab your girlfriends, dress in your florals, and head to the movie theaters this weekend to see this beautiful movie." That sentiment echoes Lively's comments from an official promo: "Grab your friends. Wear your florals." Perhaps oddest of all is the cross-promotional tie-ins with , the Marvel Studios blockbuster starring Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, that released two weeks before It Ends with Us. It should go without saying (but clearly requires uttering) that no equivalency exists between a superhero comedy and a drama about domestic violence. Nor does anything make the films an appropriate vehicle for a Barbenheimer-esque comedic couples' routine.

The Tonal Difference Between the ‘It Ends with Us’ Movie and Its Marketing Couldn’t Be Clearer

It's probably not a stretch to assume that, in the minds of studio executives, a romance sells better than a drama confronting cyclical domestic violence. In an ideal world, media would exist for art's sake alone, with profits translating into artists being properly compensated for their work. But Hollywood is a business machine. From that generalized perspective, Lively tying her product launch into a buzz-generating book adaptation is a solid strategy — for any film besides this one. Promoting hair care, twirling in coordinated outfits on the red carpet, and rarely saying the words "domestic violence" when directly asked about the topic, are the same kinds of baffling missteps as when Hoover and Atria Books announced, then canceled, an It Ends with Us coloring book. Rumors about a feud between Baldoni and his co-stars aside (unless allegations or concrete information emerge; Baldoni recently hired a crisis PR firm), at this time, Baldoni has been the only participant openly addressing the domestic violence content. On August 13, five days after It Ends with Us debuted, Lively shared domestic violence statistics and the assistance hotline number to her Instagram Stories — a social media format that vanishes within 24 hours — without name-dropping her film.

This 'M3GAN' Star Will Lead the Next Colleen Hoover Movie Adaptation

'It Ends With Us' and 'Verity' are also getting the movie treatment.

It's impossible to separate It Ends with Us from the larger conversation about how the novel depicts domestic violence: whether Hoover's approach is respectful and accurate, or misguided and romanticized. Hoover's catalog often spans multiple genres, including suspense and romance. The reveal surrounding Ryle Kincaid's (Baldoni) abuse is designed to shock and disorient viewers as much as it does Lily, an approach the movie echoes without oversexualizing his looks or overromanticizing his pursuit. Indeed, Baldoni's direction, which emphasizes facial expressions, and cinematographer Barry Peterson's dreamy autumn-core color palette, help woo the audience into a complacent state mimicking how Ryle manipulatively ensnares Lily bit by bit; it's the closing of a trap laid by a man who's neither brilliant nor clever.

What Ryle is, then, is a violent and toxic narcissist who has everything at his disposal — wealth, privilege, looks, charm, professional respect — to deploy on his chosen victim. It Ends with Us the movie might wield a sledgehammer's subtlety, but it valiantly attempts to portray how insidiously abusers prey upon others' emotions while granting survivors compassion in a culture as quick to victim-blame as blinking. The National Domestic Violence Hotline reports that in the U.S., an average of 24 people per minute are victims of "rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner," totaling "more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year."

But a line must be drawn between crafting a narrative experience and monopolizing an unsuspecting public with a blatant bait-and-switch. Selling It Ends with Us through exciting rom-com levity is perhaps the most misaligned PR spin possible. Doing so fails to properly warn survivors and risks retraumatizing those expecting heartwarming escapism. It's almost worse than the film's nonsensical decision to not include a content warning before the opening credits or prominently place domestic violence resources during either set of credits because marketing exists to sell a product before anyone steps inside the theater doors. With that goal in mind, it's also not unlikely to assume, while leaving room for good faith errors, that whatever team decided on this approach chose the cynical option one expects of a capitalist business: selling tickets.

Marketing ‘It Ends with Us’ as a Romance Encourages Ticket Sales, but the Cost Is Too High

The decision is especially egregious considering how strongly It Ends with Us targets women: that coveted, economy-driving, and still belittled demographic. Women have always primarily powered the romance genre, either through classic paperback bodice-rippers or the BookTok revenue stream. Debates about whether It Ends with Us counts as a romance or not (you can read the official Romance Writers of America's genre guidelines and decide for yourself), the convergence of BookTok and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the 2016 novel into the cultural stratosphere. According to Deadline, "The first trailer [for It Ends with Us] racked up 128.1M views in its first 24 hours, becoming the biggest female event movie trailer in recent years."

It Ends with Us may be a flawed venture working with flawed material, but its production had a world of tactics at its feet. Funneling its immense star power profile into advocacy and education work on a hitherto unseen scale isn't merely the morally right act, it helps generate lasting goodwill with audiences more interested in celebrities who show authenticity than a traditionally polished image (even if said authenticity is equally polished). It Ends with Us is about domestic violence; that's a perspective nearly impossible to argue against. In the wrong hands, turning domestic violence into a marketing buzzword would have been a calamitous misstep. What's far more profoundly disturbing is how It Ends with Us's marketing has ignored it to a point that teeters too close to exploitation.

It Ends with Us is now playing in theaters across the U.S.

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