Reese Witherspoon Reclaims Hello Sunshine With Mediawan Deal

Reese Witherspoon is buying back Hello Sunshine, the production company she founded in 2016, and she is doing it with Mediawan, the French group on an aggressive Hollywood buying spree. The seller is Candle Media, which acquired the banner in a deal that valued it at nearly $1 billion.

The buyback returns control of the studio behind "Big Little Lies," "The Morning Show" and "Where the Crawdads Sing" to its founder. Hello Sunshine co-founder Seth Rodsky will join the company's Board alongside Witherspoon and representatives from Mediawan.

Neither party disclosed the price of the repurchase. That number matters: Candle Media's original investment pegged the company at close to $1 billion, and any gap between that figure and today's terms would say a great deal about how the market now values mid-size independent producers. For now, that information stays private.

What does Witherspoon actually get back?

A production slate and a media brand. Hello Sunshine was founded in 2016 with backing from Peter Chernin and Jesse Jacobs through The Chernin Group. Its catalogue includes "Big Little Lies," "The Morning Show," "Daisy Jones & The Six" and the 2022 drama "Where the Crawdads Sing." Recent releases include "Elle," the "Legally Blonde" prequel series on Prime Video, and "Lucky" with Apple TV.

The company also carries Reese's Book Club, a commercial engine Capton singled out as a driver of "strong connections with audiences."

"Mediawan has built a global, independent studio by putting creators first. That has always been my vision for Hello Sunshine," Witherspoon said. "I'm investing alongside Mediawan and joining Pierre-Antoine Capton and his teams because this is the perfect home for this new media landscape. It's also a homecoming."

She credited Chernin and Jacobs, who "believed in Hello Sunshine from day one," and thanked Blackstone and Candle Media for "their partnership and unwavering support." She closed with a promise: "The best is still ahead." Whether that holds depends on execution under a new ownership structure — her third in nine years.

Why Mediawan?

The deal extends a pattern. Mediawan has spent recent years acquiring Hollywood assets of a certain pedigree: Chernin Entertainment, Brad Pitt's Plan B and See-Saw Films. Its other labels include Kinetic Content, Wiedemann & Berg, Palomar, Our Films, Drama Republic, Chapter2 and Chi-Fou-Mi.

Titles released through Mediawan brands include the films "Backrooms," "F1" and "The Greatest Showman," and the series "Slow Horses," "Call My Agent!," "Love Is Blind" and "New Girl."

"Mediawan has thrived by bringing together the best creative companies and giving them the resources, scale, and independence to tell great stories," said Pierre-Antoine Capton, co-founder and CEO of Mediawan Group. "Led by a generational talent in Reese, Hello Sunshine has an extraordinary track record of telling premium stories through film and TV and forming strong connections with audiences through Reese's Book Club."

Capton's pitch is scale with independence — "giving producers access to a broader pool of talent, IP and resources, while preserving their independence is what differentiates Mediawan." The claim has held so far for Plan B and See-Saw. Hello Sunshine is now the test case with the highest profile.

The deal machinery

Moelis & Company served as financial advisor to Candle Media. Kirkland & Ellis represented Candle Media and Hello Sunshine. Latham & Watkins represented Witherspoon. Gibson Dunn represented Mediawan.

What does this change for the independent-studio market? A founder re-acquiring her company from a private-equity-backed consolidator — and joining a European group to do it — signals that the consolidation wave of the streaming boom years may be running in reverse. The terms, undisclosed, will tell the fuller story.