Blake Lively is serving former Scooter Braun and Hybe America, where he serves as CEO, with subpoenas in her ongoing lawsuit against It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Hybe Corp., the South Korean entertainment giant, has an investment stake in The Agency Group (TAG), the publicity firm founded by crisis PR veteran Melissa Nathan, who was brought aboard to represent Baldoni around the time of the movie’s release in late summer 2024. Months later, Nathan was among those named in a lawsuit filed by Lively alleging that Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer retaliated against her by weaponizing social media after she raised claims of sexual harassment.
Braun’s entry into the high-profile case comes only two days after a federal judge in New York granted a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, personal publicist Leslie Sloane and The New York Times.
Lively’s original lawsuit, which began as a complaint first filed with the California Civil Rights Commission, remains set for trial March 9, 2026.
In subpoenaing Braun and Hybe America, her legal team appears to be attempting to gather further information regarding Nathan. (Braun has not commented on the legal matter.)
Braun and Baldoni have been friendly in the past, and once spoke together on Podcast about the #MeToo movement. (A source, however, says Braun has never seen It Ends With Us.)
Lively and Braun share another another person in common, albeit under very different circumstances — Taylor Swift, who has been a longtime friend of Lively’s. The same can’t be said of Braun, whose business dealings as related to his acquisition of Big Machine Records and, with it, ownership of Swift’s catalog of master recordings, drove a public wedge between the two music moguls in 2019.
In a recent interview, Braun recalled the moment he saw Swift’s Tumblr post where she said learning he had control of her catalog was her “worst case scenario” after “incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.” The sale led the Grammy winner to re-record and release all but two of her initial six records.
Braun’s comments came a few weeks after Swift bought back her catalog for her first six albums in a deal with Shamrock Capital.
Like Braun, Swift has also been caught up in the Baldoni-Lively battle. She gave permission to use one of her songs in Lively’s cut of the film, and also faced the prospect of having to testify regarding her role in supporting Lively’s script changes to the movie’s opening scene. (In an email exchange between Lively and Baldoni that was was made public in legal filings, Lively referred to Reynolds and Swift as her “dragons.”)
While Lively’s legal team declared Monday’s ruling a “total victory,” Judge Lewis J. Liman of the Southern District did leave the door open for Wayfarer and Baldoni’s legal team, led by Bryan Freedman, to file an amended lawsuit relating to limited contractual obligations. He also denied a request that Freedman’s side be ordered to pay legal fees, albeit without prejudice.
In his response to the ruling, Freedman said that “while the Court dismissed the defamation related claims, the Court has invited us to amend four out of the seven claims against Ms. Lively, which will showcase additional evidence and refined allegations. This case is about false accusations of sexual harassment and retaliation and a nonexistent smear campaign, which Ms. Lively’s own team conveniently describes as ‘untraceable’ because they cannot prove what never happened.”
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