It Ends With Us isn't the first messy press tour.

Right now, all eyes are on the It Ends With Us press tour. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard by now that there's drama amongst the cast and crew. While we may never know what actually happened on the set of the film, there are plenty of rumours circulating online.

What's not up for debate, however, is that the promotional tour for the film has been overshadowing the actual movie (which, for the record, we liked!). 

Instead of talking about the film, the internet is busy dissecting the interviews from director Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, and the rest of the cast. Instead of talking about whether they liked the film or not, or whether it's a good adaptation of the mega-viral Colleen Hoover novel it was based on, all anyone can talk about is the whirlwind of drama surrounding the film's release.

Of course, this certainly isn't the first time that a film's press tour has made headlines beyond the film itself. Here are eight other films with chaotic and/or dramatic press tours.

War of the Worlds (2005).

A major turning point for Tom Cruise's career, the War of the Worlds press tour was chaotic from start to finish. Remember Cruise jumping on the couch? Yeah, he was there to promote War of the Worlds, not to promote his new relationship with Katie Holmes.

Or maybe you recall the time he called Brooke Shields "irresponsible" for taking anti-depressants as she was battling post-partum depression. Mmmyeah, he was also supposed to be promoting War of the Worlds then.

Weeks of headlines built up to Cruise's appearance on TODAY with Matt Lauer, which escalated into a heated discussion about Scientology, mental health, and psychiatry, and ended with Cruise snapping that Lauer was being "glib" and didn't "even know what Ritalin" was.

"I'm not prescribing Ritalin, Tom," Lauer shot back. "And I"m not asking anyone else to do it, I'm simply saying, 'I know some people who seem to have been helped by it.'"

Had it not been for the whirlwind of publicity brewing around Cruise at the time, there's a chance the public would have responded more empathetically to some of Cruise's more understandable moments on this press tour, like when he got upset that someone had sprayed him with a water gun at the London premiere of the film, or when he was badgered about his relationship with ex-wife Nicole Kidman on 60 Minutes Australia.

 Alas, it was just more tabloid fodder for him at the time. 

The Twilight franchise (2008 - 2012).

Robert Pattinson gleefully responding that the end of the Twilight franchise was only bittersweet "FOR THEM!!!" (them being the fans) and cracking up was an iconic moment. Does it live rent-free in your head, too, or are you normal?

Pattinson's brutal disdain for the entire Twilight series is truly a thing of beauty. From the moment he said that Twilight seemed "like a book that wasn't supposed to be published" while doing press for the first film, right through to his unrestrained joy that the series was over while promoting Breaking Dawn Part Two, Pattison chose chaos every single time, and TBH, more celebs should embrace this approach while promoting their films.

Melancholia (2011).

When it comes to disastrous publicity, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with something worse than the time director Lars von Trier told a room full of journalists that he "understood Hitler" while promoting his film Melancholia at the Cannes Film Festival.

The "joke" made global headlines, and although Melancholia received good reviews, particularly for Kirsten Dunst's performance, it failed to receive any attention come Oscar nominations.

Now You See Me (2013).

Less of a disastrous press tour and more of a disastrous interview, Jesse Eisenberg went viral while promoting Now You See Me in 2013.

"Don't cry now. Cry after the interview is over, because otherwise it'll look like I was responsible for it," Eisenberg told interviewer Romina Puga, after calling her the "Carrot Top of interviewers". It was one of many barbs he'd thrown at her in the one minute and 19 seconds they'd been sitting down together.

Whether Eisenberg was joking or not remains up for debate — for what it's worth, Eisenberg has said that he was "mischaracterised" by the viral clip — but intent doesn't negate impact, and Puga certainly didn't feel like he was joking.

In a blog post published after the interview, Puga wrote that she had just been "humiliated by Jesse Eisenberg" and called the experience "self-esteem butchering". 

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015).

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan sparked rumours that they hated one another after this junket interview from the Fifty Shades of Grey press tour went viral.

Viewers were quick to note that the pair seemed exasperated — both with the set up of the interview, which had the co-stars answering questions being posited to them by floating heads on an iPad positioned behind them, as well as one another. Johnson and Dornan offered deadpan answers to the questions, openly sighing, scoffing, and just generally looking like they'd rather be anywhere but there.

But did the duo hate each other, or were they just exhausted from doing a gazillion back-to-back interviews to promote the blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey film?

In a 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Johnson said the tension wasn't about Dornan, but rather, that she was 23 years old, locked into a "scary" contract, and that the franchise had become "something crazy".

"There were a lot of different disagreements," Johnson said about making the film. "I haven’t been able to talk about this truthfully ever, because you want to promote a movie the right way, and I’m proud of what we made ultimately and everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, but it was tricky."

Johnson went on to refute the allegations of a feud with Dornan, saying that although it was "weird", he was "like a brother" to her.

"I love him so, so, so much. And we were really there for each other," she added.

Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

Remember Batfleck? The saddest Batman to ever exist? In an era where Marvel was dominating the box office, the DC Extended Universe was floundering in the mid-2010s, and there's perhaps no better example of that than Zack Snyder's Batman Vs. Superman. 

Although the film was a box office success, it was... let's just say not a hit with the critics. Like, "it's giving 29% on Rotten Tomatoes" kinda bad, and Ben Affleck seemed to be feeling the brunt of those bad reviews.

While Henry Cavill was able to talk his way around the film's bad press, Affleck's "resting sad face" during one interview quickly went viral, giving birth to the "Sadfleck" meme we know and love to this day.

At the time, Affleck had been set to write and direct his own Batman film after Dawn of Justice, but this never eventuated. While he's made a few appearances as Batman since Batman Vs. Superman, the film Affleck was supposed to write, direct and star in was scrapped. In 2022, the Bat-torch was officially passed on to Robert Pattinson.

Don't Worry Darling (2022).

Remember when the entire internet spent days trying to figure out whether or not Harry Styles SPAT on Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival premiere of Don't Worry Darling? I don't want to sound nostalgic about something that's not even two years old yet, but man, those were the days, right?!

The Don't Worry Darling press tour was nothing short of diabolical, to be quite honest. Florence Pugh ignoring basically all of her promotional duties and then rocking up in Venice at the last minute, unbothered, Aperol Spritz in hand? Iconic. Chris Pine dissociating while Harry Styles yapped about how Don't Worry Darling was "a real go-to-the-theatre-film movie"? Stunning. Olivia Wilde's salad dressing side quest drama? Just the dressing on top of the drama that kept us FED, and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

All press tours should aim for this level of chaos.

Madame Web (2024).

@huffpostuk Madame Web star Dakota Johnson reacts to viral trailer line 🕷️ #MadameWeb #DakotaJohnson #dakotajohnsonedit #dakotajohnsonfan #spiderman ♬ original sound - HuffPost UK

"Yeah. Spider-Man: Here He Comes, that's number one. Spider-Man: And He's Back, and the other one, the last one is, uh, The Goblet of Spider-Man."

This was Dakota Johnson's response to being asked if she could name the three Tom Holland Spider-Man films, while promoting Madame Web.

As the film continued to receive terrible reviews (it currently has an 11% score on Rotten Tomatoes, FYI), Johnson was asked about the line, "He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died", which had gone viral for sounding clunky.

Johnson feigned ignorance.

"Somebody brought this up and I have no idea what it's about," she said, adding, "Isn't any sentence out of context... out of context? What a silly thing."

In a later interview with Bustle, however, Johnson said that she would "probably... never do anything like" Madame Web again.

"I don’t make sense in that world," she said. "And I know that now."

Image: YouTube/@Fred Film Radio, Getty, YouTube/@Sabconth