Here’s How the It Ends With Us Movie Adaptation Differs From the Book

This piece was originally published when It Ends With Us hit theaters in August 2024. It's being republished as the movie arrives on Netflix on Dec. 9, 2024.

It’s no secret that Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us is beloved by the author's global fanbase. The emotionally charged book, which Hoover said was inspired by her mother leaving her abusive father when she was a young girl, was first published in 2016 but went viral during the pandemic in 2021 thanks to BookTok. All told, it has sold 6.9 million copies (print and ebooks combined) since it debuted. Hoover’s novel centers on the story of the whimsically named Lily Bloom, a florist trying to escape her traumatic past, who embarks on a romance that takes a dark and dangerous turn. As her new relationship begins to disturbingly replicate the cycle of abuse in her life, Lily encounters an old friend from her past, whose presence helps her realize what she wants for her future.

Now, Lily’s dramatic story will play out on the big screen, with a movie adaptation of the same name starring Blake Lively as Lily and directed by Justin Baldoni. Baldoni also co-stars as the film’s villain Ryle, Lily’s handsome but volatile partner, whose outsized anger issues turn abusive as their whirlwind romance develops into a marriage and parenthood. In an interview with Today, Baldoni said that staying true to Hoover’s story with the film adaptation was a top priority for him.

Read more: Why We Can’t Stop Reading Colleen Hoover’s Trauma-Filled Novels

“I’ve been a fierce protector of the book and Lily’s story and her emotional arc, and not wanting to change it much,” Baldoni said. “That's what I promised Colleen: I will protect this book.”

In the movie, Lily has moved to Boston for a fresh start, to fulfill her dream of opening her own flower shop while attempting to escape the dark memories of her turbulent childhood. She has a chance encounter with Ryle (Baldoni), a handsome neurosurgeon, that turns into a passionate relationship once they meet again after his sister Allysa (Jenny Slate) coincidentally begins working at Lily’s shop. Though Lily is overjoyed with her new relationship, Ryle’s erratic outbursts of anger trigger recollections of her father’s violent abuse of her mother, as well as deeply hidden memories of Lily’s first love, a boy named Atlas, whose own troubled home life bonded the pair for life. The movie explores their young love with flashbacks of a young Lily (Isabela Ferrer) and Atlas (Alex Neustaedter). The relationship becomes dangerous when Ryle’s bouts of anger turn violent towards Lily, especially once the now grown-up Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) re-enters her life after nearly a decade of no contact. After Lily learns that she is pregnant, she’s determined to break free of the trauma of her past to create a better future for herself and her baby.

Read more: Breaking Down All the It Ends With Us Drama

For the most part, the film hews closely to the book, but there are some concrete differences that screenwriter Christy Hall made in adapting the story for the screen. In an interview with E! News, Hoover acknowledged the necessity of these changes. 

“With every adaptation, things have to change," Hoover said. "You're trying to condense this whole storyline into a film, so there were some changes to make the flow better.”

Here, we’ve rounded up all the major changes that were made in the film adaptation of It Ends With Us and how they differ from the book.

There’s way less Ellen DeGeneres in the movie

In the novel, Ellen DeGeneres is a huge figure throughout Lily’s life. As a young girl, she loves watching DeGeneres’ show so much that she tunes in every day after school and writes her journal entries in the format of letters to the talk show host. When she begins spending time with Atlas, the pair bond while watching DeGeneres’ show together and have an affinity for the movie Finding Nemo because DeGeneres voices the character of Dory. Their connection over DeGeneres follows them into adulthood; Lily continues to journal as though writing letters to DeGeneres and later gives her daughter the middle name Dory.

In the film, DeGeneres is largely absent. While Lily is seen journaling throughout the film, it’s not revealed what format those entries are taking. The only reference made to DeGeneres in the movie is in a flashback scene when young Lily and Atlas are seen briefly watching her show together.

Read more: It Ends With Us Can't Quite Turn Trauma into Drama

Ryle and Lily are older in the movie

One of the changes that fans contested vocally when the film adaptation was announced was the ages of Ryle and Lily. In the book, Lily is 23 and Ryle is 30; when it was announced that Lively, who is in her 30s, would be playing Lily, fans were quick to point out the age difference. (Baldoni is 40.)

Hoover has defended aging up the characters up for the film adaptation, going so far as to say that the ages of Ryle and Lily in the movie are more realistic for where their characters are in life. 

“As an author, we make mistakes,” she said an interview with Today. “There’s no 28-year-old neurosurgeons, you know? You go to school for 15 years. And so to make corrections to what I messed up in the book, we aged the characters up somewhat.”

Hoover also made the case that having the characters be older was better for grappling with the heavy issues that the characters were dealing with.

"Eight years ago, when I wrote the book, new adult was huge and everyone was wanting to read characters in their very early 20s,” she told E! News. “And this is such a tough subject matter that putting young, young characters on screen just didn't feel right to us. So I think aging them up was such a great move, and it worked so well on film.”

Atlas’ restaurant gets a name change

In the book, Atlas tells Lily that his dream is to move to Boston because “everything is better in Boston.” Later, when they meet again by chance, it’s at his restaurant, BiB, an acronym that pays homage to their conversation about “better in Boston.” For the film adaptation, however, the restaurant is called Root, in reference to a conversation the two have about the strength of an oak tree and its roots.

Hoover said that the decision to change the restaurant’s name for the movie was because there wasn’t enough time to make sure that the “better in Boston” moment would resonate.

“It stood for something in the book that became a big thing for Lily to show how much she meant to him," Hoover said in an interview with E! News. "So that changed to Root in the movie because we didn't have as much time to put in all of the things that happened in the book to make that significant moment happen in the movie…changing it to Root went back to a conversation they had as kids in the film [from which] you get the same feels that you got in the book.”

Some characters don’t make the jump from the book to the screen

The impossibility of including every aspect of a novel in a film means that some details will inevitably be cut; for It Ends With Us, that meant the exclusion of a few minor characters. In the book, Lily’s friend Devin helps to bring about their first night together and her roommate and eventual employee Lucy are part of her life, but they did not make the cut for the movie. Additionally, although Lily meets Ryle’s mother and father in the book, they are not included at all in the movie.

And though these changes were made, fans are still eager to see the film (which, if they’re worried, stays fairly true to Hoover’s story). For some, seeing the story play out in a new medium—and then getting to debate the merits of each—is only adding to their excitement. On X (formerly Twitter), user @estelleokunlola wrote: “I want to go and watch It Ends With Us with someone that’s as interested in the movie as I am. Bonus points if they’ve read the book so we can agree to disagree on how bad or good the adaptation is.”

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