This Blake Lively Book Adaptation Is *Not* Cancelled
"The movie is finished and coming out soon. Don’t believe anything you read on social media these days."
Blake Lively has starred in many book adaptations like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), Gossip Girl (2007-2012) and most recently It Ends With Us (2024). Her latest role has stirred up so much controversy that rumors circulated about another Blake Lively book-to-screen adaptation being cancelled amidst the drama. That movie is A Simple Favor 2.
The sequel follows A Simple Favor (2018), a crime thriller about a mommy blogger, Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), who meets an enigmatic mother at her son’s school, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively). The friendship is cut short when Emily disappears. Stephanie documents her attempt to find Emily on her blog, and eventually uncovers a complicated web of crimes.
In A Simple Favor 2, Stephanie is now a successful blogger after livestreaming the results of her earlier investigation. The official plot summary says we will see: “Stephanie Smothers and Emily Nelson as they head to the beautiful island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman.” Shooting wrapped in May 2024 and it was expected that the film would release in 2025.
That is, until the latest development in the It Ends With Us drama cyclone posited that this sequel was cancelled. A supposed insider posted to Twitter/X Friday that Amazon decided not to release A Simple Favor 2 because of Lively’s controversy as well as the actresses’ supposed feud with costar Anna Kendrick.
Paul Feig directed both the Simple Favor original and sequel. He responded to the post and clarified: “This is total BS. Sorry. The movie is finished and coming out soon. Don’t believe anything you read on social media these days.” Feig continued:
My friend, it’s called post production, which generally takes over half a year at least when you factor in editing, scoring, special effects, sound mixing, close captioning and all the technical quality control that has to be done. Our post schedule always had us finishing everything by mid-January. Movies don’t come out the second they’re finished because the studio spends the previous year deciding the best date to release it. We’ve always planned on something in the spring/summer of this year. That’s how movies work. I hope this helps.
The director also stated that both Lively and Kendrick turned in “amazing performances” and he can’t wait for fans to see the film.
