How 'It Ends With Us' doubled New Jersey for Boston, Massachusetts

Sony and Netflix's It Ends With Us takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, but was filmed in primarily New Jersey reveals location manager Jeff Brown.

The box-office hit, starring Blake Lively as Lily Bloom and Justin Baldoni as Ryle Kincaid, is based on the novel by Coleen Hoover and is set in and around Boston. Baldoni also directed the picture from a screenplay by Christy Hall.

Speaking to People, Brown confirmed that the decision to film outside of the New England state was "primarily financial". 

New Jersey's tax credit is 35%, while Massachusetts' is 25%; it's unconfirmed how much, if any, of the filming incentives the production accessed.

Not filming in Boston itself wasn't a dealbreaker, Brown said. “It was finding places that Justin and Blake would be comfortable performing these scenes,” he said. 

Lily's childhood home had to fit two timelines - Lily's childhood and her adulthood, when she returns to visit her mother - making it more difficult to find. He chose a home in Plainfield, as “Plainfield has a couple of streets that [are] very old. The [houses] are all very big and very nice. And the homeowners had preserved a lot of the original mouldings,” Brown said. “Those are things that you're looking for as a location scout, you're looking for those details because they're things that are really hard to replicate.” 

The central location of Lily's flower shop was a vacant storefront in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The rooftop where fate brings Lily and Ryle, played by Baldoni, together was filmed in Los Angeles, Brown revealed. This was down to the timing of the shoot; this scene was being filmed in January, when doing an outdoor scene in fridig New Jersey wasn't an option. 

The restaurant run by Atlas (played by Brandon Sklenar) Lily's childhood love and with whom she reunites, is a real restaurant in Jersey City called South House. 

It Ends With Us is a Columbia Pictures, Wayfarer Studios, and Saks Picture Company production. The film is produced by Alex Saks, Jamey Heath, Blake Lively. Executive producers are Steve Sarowitz, Todd Black, Colleen Hoover, Andrew Calof, Andrea Ajemian, and John Logan Pierson.

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