Blake Lively’s A Simple Favor 2 to Open SXSW Festival amid Justin Baldoni Legal Battle

The release of Blake Lively‘s next movie is fast approaching in the middle of her legal battle with It Ends With Us costar Justin Baldoni.

Lively, 37, reprises her role alongside Anna Kendrick in the sequel to 2018’s A Simple Favor, titled Another Simple Favor, and it was announced Tuesday, Feb. 4, that its world premiere will be at the 2025 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, serving as the opening night debut on March 7.

Another Simple Favor will later be available to stream on Prime Video starting May 1. The cast also includes Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell, Henry Golding and Allison Janney.

Director Paul Feig said in a statement, “I couldn’t be more thrilled to be back at my favorite festival in the world where we successfully launched Bridesmaids and Spy, and I cannot begin to say how honored I am to have our film opening it all.”

“I’ve avoided making sequels to any of my films but these characters were just too much fun not to revisit,” added Feig. “So to be able to have Anna, Blake, Henry, Andrew, Michele, Elizabeth, Alex and myself watch our film with the great SXSW audience is a bucket-list event I’ll be able to check off March 7 and move playing drums for Dwight Yoakum’s band up to the top slot.”

It Ends With Us became the highest-grossing movie of Lively’s career, but it also became the center of a heated legal battle with Baldoni, 41, the director and costar.

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In December, she sued Baldoni and others, alleging sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign to tarnish her reputation, which he has denied. Baldoni responded with a $400 million lawsuit of his own, accusing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, among others, of defamation and extortion. Her lawyers called that lawsuit “desperate” and “meritless.”

Another Simple Favor director Feig, 62, has spoken out in support of Lively after she took legal action.

“I’ve now made two movies with Blake and all I can say is she’s one of the most professional, creative, collaborative, talented and kind people I’ve ever worked with,” the director wrote on X Dec. 22. “She truly did not deserve any of this smear campaign against her. I think it’s awful she was put through this.”

In January, Feig denied rumors that the A Simple Favor sequel’s release was being delayed because of Lively’s legal battle with Baldoni. “This is total BS. Sorry. The movie is finished and coming out soon. Don’t believe anything you read on social media these days,” he wrote on X Jan. 10.

In October 2024, Kendrick, 39, who made her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, told PEOPLE it was “lovely” reuniting with Lively for the sequel.

“She lives on the East Coast, I live on the West Coast, so we don’t get to see each other often. But it was lovely, and I think that those characters have such weird chemistry that it’s so fun to just get the gang back together,” said Kendrick. “And it does feel a little bit like riding a bike.”