Hello Sunshine, the media company owned by Reese Witherspoon, has been sold to a venture-backed by Blackstone Group for about $900 million.
This is the first acquisition being made by the newly formed company under Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, who are both former Disney executives. Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden will continue to oversee its day-to-day operations and will join the yet-to-be-named company’s board, reports CNBC.
“Today marks a tremendous moment for Hello Sunshine,” Witherspoon said in a statement. “I started this company to change the way all women are seen in media. Over the past few years, we have watched our mission thrive through books, TV, film and social platforms. Today, we’re taking a huge step forward by partnering with Blackstone, which will enable us to tell even more entertaining, impactful and illuminating stories about women’s lives globally."
Hello Sunshine was founded in 2016 as a joint venture with AT&T’s Otter Media.
Witherspoon's media empire also includes Reese’s Book Club, a natural move given the fact that a number of her projects are adaptations of female-penned novels. The club has 2.1 million followers, and 42 out of its 50 picks have made their way onto the New York Times Best Sellers list.
“I started this company to change the way all women are seen in media,” Witherspoon had earlier said in a statement.
Apart from producing popular films and TV shows including Little Fires Everywhere, The Morning Show, the company has recently moved into podcasting and into family entertainment, reports Variety.
Here's a brief list of notable projects led by Witherspoon's production company:
The Morning Show
On The Morning Show, Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston co-star as two-morning show anchors struggling to deal with the fallout of former co-anchor Mitch (Steve Carell) getting fired and being accused of sexual misconduct. The show received eight Emmy nominations in 2020, including acting nods for Aniston, Carell, Martin Short, Mark Duplass, and Billy Crudup.
The second season of The Morning Show will release on 17 September on Apple TV+.
Little Fires Everywhere
Little Fires Everywhere, based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Celeste Ng, premiered on Hulu in 2020. Set in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio during the late 1990s, it features Witherspoon and Kerry Washington as mothers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. For the 2020 Emmys, Little Fires Everywhere was nominated for five awards, including Best Limited Series and a nomination for Washington.
Check out Firstpost's review of the show: "Little Fires Everywhere delves into how choice itself comes from a place of entitlement. It exposes how many-a-challenges of motherhood are alleviated because of racial and class privileges, making it a smoother sail, even if not an entirely smooth sail."
Truth Be Told
Truth Be Told, based on a novel called Are You Sleeping by Kathleen Barber, is "about a true-crime podcaster, played in the series by Octavia Spencer, who's attempting to prove the innocence of a convicted killer," played by Aaron Paul, writes Vulture.
The company has a number of projects in development, including the forthcoming Netflix series From Scratch, starring Zoe Saldana, and Apple TV+’s The Last Thing He Told Me, starring Julia Roberts. On the film side, Hello Sunshine is adapting the best-selling novel Where the Crawdads Sing, reports Forbes.
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/reese-witherspoons-hello-sunshine-sold-for-900-mn-a-look-at-notable-projects-produced-by-company-9860891.html
