Reese Witherspoon Partners With Mediawan To Buy Hello Sunshine — SkimNews
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- Reese Witherspoon partnered with Paris-based Mediawan to acquire Hello Sunshine from Candle Media, with co-founder Seth Rodsky joining the board alongside Witherspoon and Mediawan representatives
- Hello Sunshine launched in 2016 with Chernin Group support and produced Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, Little Fires Everywhere, Daisy Jones & The Six, Where the Crawdads Sing, and The Last Thing He Told Me
- Mediawan's portfolio now spans more than 100 production labels including Chernin Entertainment, Brad Pitt's Plan B, See-Saw Films, Kinetic Content, and Drama Republic, with shows ranging from Adolescence and Slow Horses to Love Is Blind and the Planet of the Apes franchise
- Reese's Book Club, which stays central to the company's strategy, reaches over 6.2 million readers and has driven roughly $900 million in U.S. book sales, with 60 million copies sold and 90-plus picks hitting the New York Times Best Sellers list
- Candle Media, co-founded by ex-Disney exec Kevin Mayer with Blackstone backing, had acquired a controlling stake in Hello Sunshine and bought Moonbug for nearly $3 billion before the post-Covid streaming pullback squeezed supplier economics
Why it matters: Candle Media built its portfolio by acquiring content companies with Blackstone capital during the streaming boom, but as Netflix and other platforms pivoted from subscriber growth to profit, suppliers lost leverage — this deal returns Hello Sunshine to its founder while embedding it in Mediawan's European-anchored, 100-label ecosystem. For Witherspoon, it preserves creative control of a slate with proven hits and a 6.2M-reader book club worth roughly $900M in U.S. sales.
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