Blake Lively Might Be Having the Last Laugh After the Trailer of 'It Ends With Us' Is Finally Released

When a beloved novel is adapted to the screen, it’s no surprise that readers have some strong opinions. After all, each of them had an idea of what the story would look like when they read it on their own. So, when Colleen Hoover‘s record-breaking romance It Ends With Us was set to become a movie, fans were more adamant than ever about what it should (and shouldn’t) look like.

When Blake Lively was cast as Lily Bloom, a determined flower shop owner with a complicated past, and Justin Baldoni was cast as Ryle Kincaid, a stubborn yet charming neurosurgeon, fans of the book were already unhappy. For them, Lively and Baldoni, who are 36 and 40 years old, respectively, were too old to play the protagonists.

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After so much attention, Hoover herself had to butt in. “Back when I wrote It Ends With Us, the new adult (genre) was very popular. You were writing college-age characters. That’s what I was contracted to do. I made Lily very young. I didn’t know that neurosurgeons went to school for 50 years. There’s not a 20-something neurosurgeon,” Hoover told the Today Show at the time, per Collider. “As I started making this movie, I’m like, we need to age them out because I messed up,” the author said. “So that’s my fault.”

But, despite the backlash over casting, the movie carried on, and, on May 16, released its very first trailer.

In it, a red-haired Lively meets Baldoni’s character and develops a steamy connection before it takes a turn for the worst. “We all have an idea of what love can be, that special connection you feel, that first kiss, but 15 seconds, that’s all it takes to completely change everything,” Lively says in the voice-over.

As Ryle’s abusive behavior continues, Lily reconnects with her first love Atlas Corrigan (played by Brandon Sklenar) and she finds some solace in her complicated relationship.

“If one day you had a daughter, what would you say to her?” Lively’s Lily asks Ryle in one snippet. “She came to you and said the person she loved was hurting her, what would you say to her?”

“As hard as this choice is, we break the pattern or the pattern breaks us,” Lively narrates at the end.

The trailer, which promises a complicated romance with twists and turns, received mixed reactions from fans online.

“This looks way better than I was expecting,” wrote one fan on YouTube. “The flower shop is exactly what I envisioned. Still not sold on the guy playing Atlas, but that’s okay!”

Others, on the other hand, were more emphatic. “I’M LITERALLY CRYING,” wrote another commenter. “THIS LOOKS SO GOOD AND SO TRUE TO THE BOOKS. HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE DOUBTED BLAKE AS LILY OR JUSTIN AS RYLE? They are so perfect for their respective role. I’m already in tears. FREAKING CANT WAIT.”

“I can’t stand Colleen Hoover or anything she writes and that’s no secret to anyone,” one user wrote on X. “But I know how to admit when something looks good and this looks good.”

So is Lively finally getting the last laugh? Guess we’ll have to wait until premiere day on August 9 to see!

If you or someone you know has been the victim of emotional or physical violence, you can get help. To speak with someone who is trained to help with these situations, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800.799.SAFE (7233) or chat online at www.thehotline.org/

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