Why He Can’t ‘Fathom’ Adapting the Sequel ‘Yet’ (VIDEO)

The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s It Ends With Us is gearing up to be one of the summer’s newest hits. Hoover’s bestseller, following Lily Bloom’s (Blake Lively) journey from a traumatic childhood to breaking the cycle of domestic abuse by leaving her husband Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni), has become one of the most popular modern-day romance novels.

Fans of the book are well aware of the It Ends With Us sequel, It Starts With Us. Baldoni, who also directs the It Ends With Us film adaptation, revealed whether he’s spoken with Hoover and Lively about adapting the sequel.

“I haven’t. I have no idea what that story would be,” Baldoni told TV Insider at the movie’s press junket. “I’m somebody who’s just doing my best to stay in the present and stay in the here and in the now and not think too far ahead. I’m just kind of doing my best to take this all in because it’s been five years to even get us here. So I can’t even fathom another story yet, but I’m so happy that fans love it and that she did it.”

Baldoni made his feature directorial debut with Five Feet Apart, but It Ends With Us marks his first book-to-screen adaptation. When he optioned Hoover’s novel, he knew how passionate fans were about Lily’s story and wanted the screenplay to remain faithful to the source material.

“There were so many real-life Lily Blooms who had read this book and changed their situation, and that’s what I wanted to protect,” Baldoni said. “I wanted to honor those fans and the people that have experienced what Lily experiences in this movie and really stay as close as I possibly could to the source material. Now, of course, every time you’re adapting a book to screen, you have to change things because you don’t have 400 pages of real estate. But the things that we changed, we tried to do very intentionally, and we tried to keep the emotional journey and throughline almost as identical as possible. Some situations changed, some names changed, but for the most part, we’re focused on Lily’s journey and her perspective and keeping that as identical as we possibly could.”

The Jane the Virgin alum pulled triple duty on It Ends With Us as director, star, and producer. Baldoni opened up about playing Ryle, who becomes physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive towards Lily.

“The most challenging aspect of playing Ryle was finding a way to make him human,” Baldoni explained. “I had to take myself out of it because I think I had so much anger and judgment towards what he does, and he does things that are simply unforgivable and that will never be okay in any situation. He creates real harm, and yet, I had to go in and understand why. It was really important to me to find a way to make him a fully developed 3D person who had hopes and dreams and feelings and insecurities.”

He continued, “I didn’t want to play his anger so much. I wanted to play his pain and his insecurity, and also, it was really important for me to make sure that the audience understood why Lily was with him. So, as a filmmaker, whoever was going to be playing Ryle, it was really important that we like him, and we understand why she’s with him because that protects Lily’s character throughout the movie. So I think that that was the biggest challenge, just making sure that I played him in a way that people could understand why she loved him and why the choice was so hard.”

It Ends With Us, In Theaters Now