Actress Blake Lively formally requested in federal court that director and actor Justin Baldoni pay more than $8 million in attorney fees and litigation costs.

The petition comes weeks after both celebrities settled their bitter dispute over the production of the film “It Ends With Us” (2024) out of court.

According to court documents filed in Manhattan courts to which Page Six had access, Lively's representatives detailed that the sum amounts to exactly $8,035,040.

This amount is broken down into almost 7.5 million dollars corresponding to the services of the two legal firms that defended her, and just over 539,000 dollars destined to cover operating expenses of the litigation.

Although the agreement reached last May determined that Lively would not receive any direct financial compensation to end the main case, federal district judge Lewis J. Liman later determined that the interpreter has the full right to claim defense expenses.

This is because Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, had previously filed a million-dollar countersuit for defamation and extortion of $400 million, which ended up being dismissed by the court.

“They employed scorched-earth litigation tactics designed to exhaust Lively's resources,” the actress' lawyers argued in the filing.

Lively's team justified the high costs by pointing to the massive media attention and the titanic evidence-gathering process that involved the analysis of tens of thousands of documents. The court filing reveals that one of the lead attorneys, Michael Gottlieb, applied a discounted rate of $2,187 per hour of work.

Lively's defense bases this motion on a California law that protects people who report sexual harassment against retaliation lawsuits aimed at silencing them. The prolonged legal conflict began in December 2024, when the actress accused Baldoni of fostering a hostile work environment and organizing a smear campaign against her after having pointed him out internally on the recording set.

Judge Liman granted Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios a formal deadline until July 13, 2026 to respond to the claim. After that date, the court will decide whether to ratify the millionaire figure, reduce it or reject the actress's request.