from the paging-babs dept

Justin Baldoni Streisand’s Accusations Against Him By Sending Legal Threat Over ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

There have been very few times I’ve encountered something in life that feels like it was absolutely made specifically for me. The Deadpool movie series is one of those few things. For my sensibilities, they’re just about perfect. And one of my favorite aspects of the films is the fourth-wall-breaking nature of the main character. Deadpool will often look into the camera and talk to the audience in a way that acknowledges that he’s in a movie. Examples of this are legion: Deadpool referring to the X-Men house smelling like Patrick Stewart, complaints in movie about licensing restrictions preventing cool cameos by other Marvel characters, or the narration in the 2nd film’s opener about how the entire movie was in a fact a “family movie.”

The point here is that cultural references that would normally have no place in a superhero movie abound. Some of those references even revolve around lead actor Ryan Reynold’s personal life. For instance, in Deadpool & Wolverine, a multiverse version of Deadpool that is female, Ladypool, was played by Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively. Lively recently sued a director and co-star of a film she was in, Justin Baldoni, and while Baldoni had threatened to sue her back, instead he… sued the NY Times for reporting on Lively’s accusations. Lively sued over accusations of some very gross workplace behavior, among other things, whereas Baldoni is arguing, um, that the NY Times reporting on Lively’s accusations is defamation and… fraud?

Those accusations included, for instance, Baldoni attempting to pressure Lively over her physique in the movie shortly after she had a child, sharing inappropriate content with castmembers, and talking openly about sexual topics. Baldoni, meanwhile, has been quite famous for portraying himself as a really nice guy and talking openly about how he’s a “feminist.”

What does any of this have to do with Deadpool? Well, another multiverse character that shows up is Nicepool, an unmasked, long-haired version of the titular character. And fans noticed some similarities to the details surrounding the accusations Lively has made against Baldoni.

The particular moments in Deadpool & Wolverine that echo Lively’s claims against Baldoni include Nicepool’s lines about Ladypool “snapping back” into shape after having a baby and following that up with “It’s okay, I identify as a feminist”—since Baldoni touts his status as a feminist in his podcast. A deleted scene in Deadpool & Wolverine also saw Nicepool making reference to a feminist podcast; that latter scene in particular helped the “Baldoni is Nicepool?” theory go viral.

And viral it went, indeed. Major entertainment media sources even picked this up and ran with it.

I will make no claims as to the veracity of Lively’s claims for the purposes of this post. I will say that every action Baldoni has taken since appears to be designed to keep those claims in the headlines for as long and as loud as possible. And the fact that, despite suggesting he would sue Lively directly, he hasn’t… seems telling. Also, suing the New York Times for reporting on all of this? That is a very silly gambit unlikely to end in any kind of victory for Baldoni and most certainly Streisanding the attention on the accusations against him through the proverbial roof.

But Baldoni wasn’t done there. Once the speculation about Nicepool started, he fired off a litigation hold to Disney and Marvel, once again propelling all of this back into the news.

According to Variety, Baldoni’s lawyers are using the accusation as grounds for issuing a litigation hold letter which calls on Disney and Marvel Studios to retain “documents and data” in regards to Baldoni and “Nicepool.”

The litigation letter presented by Baldoni’s team asks Marvel and Disney to preserve “any and all documents relating to the development of the ‘Nicepool’ character” in addition to “communications relating to the development, writing, and filming of storylines and scenes featuring ‘Nicepool’” and “all documents relating to or reflecting a deliberate attempt to mock, harass, ridicule, intimidate, or bully Baldoni through the character of ‘Nicepool.’”

It’s hard to see the strategy here. I suppose that perhaps there might be some utility in building towards a defamation and/or harassment case using whatever can be dug up from Disney and Marvel. But, frankly, I doubt it will be much. And the content that appears in the movie is very much going to be protected speech on First Amendment grounds, given its parody nature and the extremely veiled references it makes (if it’s even making those references at all).

Using myself as a convenient test case, I had zero idea who Baldoni was until I caught wind of this whole mess with Lively, his suit against the New York Times, and most recently this legal notice sent to Disney and Marvel. Now I don’t know that I could forget his name, his image, nor the accusations leveled against him even if I tried.

So if the impetus for all this action by Baldoni was over anger at the public nature of these accusations, well, it seems he is working against that purpose at the moment.