Justin Baldoni, in August, thought that the 1990s arcade game’s yellow, pellet-eating protagonist, Pac-Man, might be the hero he needed to assist alter the convoluted storyline surrounding the release of It Ends With Us.
He was searching for a method to change the direction of the entertainment news headlines that had been dominated for weeks by rumours of a rivalry between director-star Baldoni and his co-star Blake Lively.
In an August 18 text message to his public relations staff, Baldoni proposed breaking the news that he will next be directing a Pac-Man film, saying that this would help him “move towards the future.”
However, Baldoni’s future may no longer include Pac-Man, which he and his Wayfarer Studios have been working on since 2022.
It is one of at least three projects that are currently under scrutiny after conflict with Lively escalated from online curiosity to a full-fledged legal battle.
Amid the legal drama, which started when Lively filed a lawsuit on December 21 alleging that Baldoni had sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us and started a post-release smear campaign, insiders close to Baldoni have claimed that he has “lost three jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars” in recent days.
WME, which Wayfarer relied on to help package their own projects and locate outside films to finance as an agent, later fired Baldoni and Wayfarer.
Apart from Pac-Man, it’s unclear what other projects were shelved, and after everything is said and done, Baldoni might eventually adapt the iconic video game from the 1980s.
However, almost all of the partners that do business with Wayfarer are “having a conversation,” according to people close to the matter who spoke to THR.
The group is well-funded at a time when many independent financing firms are struggling, but it’s unclear how much collateral damage Wayfarer will face because Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, whom Baldoni is suing in his own lawsuit, have a lot of power in Hollywood.
According to reports, Wayfarer is interested in pursuing a new agreement of some kind as a sign of good faith that people would still want to do business with them, but no new initiatives have emerged for the company during the Lively struggle.
