Best-selling author Colleen Hoover’s New York Times hit novel It Ends With Us is coming to theaters this summer. As the world of Lily Bloom travels through words on a page to a director’s set, anticipation from fans has been through the roof. Both good and bad. Since the official cast announcement in January of 2023, much more information on the movie has been revealed.
Who will we be seeing?
The Sony Pictures film adaptation stars world-renowned actress Blake Lively, best known for her work in the TV series Gossip Girl and the movie thriller The Shallows. Lively is Hoover’s pick to lead the film as Lily Bloom.
Alongside Lily are love interests Ryle Kincaid and Atlas Corrigan, played by Justin Baldoni (Jane the Virgin) and Brandon Sklenar (The Offer, Midway).
Ryle is a charmingly brilliant neurosurgeon who Lily begins a passionate relationship with, while Atlas is a successful chef and Lily’s first love, whom we know from her past.
Justin Baldoni is also known in the filmmaking industry for directing Five Feet Apart (2019) and Clouds (2020). He is listed as a director for the film, and Lively will executive produce alongside him.
To transport us back to her high school love, young Lily and Atlas are played by Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter.
Additionally, joining the cast is Ryle’s sister Allysa Kincaid, played by Jenny Slate (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Obvious Child), alongside her on-screen husband Hasan Minhaj (The Daily Show) as Marshall, who also happens to be her brother Ryle’s high school best friend.
In an interview, Hoover tells PEOPLE that “seeing these characters come to life on the big screen is a dream come true.”
What is the story of It Ends With Us?
The story follows Lily Bloom, who recently graduated college and moved to Boston, where she looks to pursue her goal of opening a florist shop and escape her difficult past with an abusive father who recently passed away. She meets a cocky and charming neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid. Sparks fly and she finds hope for a better, new life in her new home.
Things are looking picture-perfect for Lily as her relationship grows and her life around it seemingly falls into place. However, as Ryle’s initial intensity becomes threatening toward Lily, old memories of her childhood come flooding back.
Here we meet Atlas, a boy who got her through the terrors of the broken, abusive home she grew up in. When her first love once again enters her life, many questions arise about Lily’s current relationship with Ryle and her troubled past.
At the core of it, this is a love story; the interpretation of which part reflects true love is up to the readers, or in this case, the viewers. Readers go through a lot of self-discovery, passionate love, struggle, adoration, and heartbreak with Lily throughout the progression of the book.
“Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.”
Colleen Hoover, It Ends With Us
Youtube/ Sony Pictures Entertainment
How big really is the original novel?
It Ends With Us is considered one of the most successful books of the last decade by any author. In the year 2022, when it reached its peak popularity, Hoover’s novel outsold the Bible; let that paint you a picture of how enormous this thing is.
In the same year, Colleen Hoover held six of the top 10 spots on The New York Times’s paperback fiction best-seller list of all time, with It Ends With Us being her highest, which held the #1 spot. This is just one of the countless best-seller lists this book has held.
She has sold well over four million copies worldwide and over three million readers have reviewed the novel on GoodReads. In 2016, It Ends With Us won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance.
Fan Reactions: the good, the bad, and the ugly
In 2023, the filming process began on May 5th in Hoboken, New Jersey. Leaked pictures of Lively on set had fans spamming the internet with the news. Especially on #booktok, a TikTok community based on novels and reading, It Ends With Us was trending quickly. Currently, it has one billion tags. As short clips and photos began to circle around TikTok, the film originally took some heat.
Blake Lively, as Lily, a recent college graduate, took criticism due to the obvious age difference between the character and actress. In an interview, Hoover explained the mistake she originally made with the characters’ ages.
Ryle in the novel is a brilliant, well-established neurosurgeon. Realistically, he is too young in the book to have reached this career path.
“I didn’t know that neurosurgeons went to school for 50 years,” she said. “There’s not a 20-something neurosurgeon…We need to age them out because I messed up.”
Colleen Hoover, PEOPLE
With this, there was a major criticism of the casting of the love interests, especially Atlas, who has become a fan-favorite character.
The ideal Atlas that readers painted in their minds while reading heavily differs from Sklenar, who was cast. However, many still have high hopes that Sklenar can bring the dream literary character to life.
Despite the initial backlash the film received, fans shifted to a more accepting mindset towards the new takes on characters after the official trailer was released in May 2024.
Hoover told PEOPLE, “The readers are the reason this book has been adapted… I’m confident they’ll be happy with what has been created.”
Official trailer of “It Ends With Us”
The official trailer for It Ends With Us was released on May 16, giving a preview of what’s to come. It teased plot points, introduced the cast, and created even more anticipation for the film’s release.
