Hello Sunshine, the media company founded by actress and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon whose titles include the hit HBO drama “Big Little Lies,” and “The Morning Show,” “Truth Be Told,” and the upcoming as-yet-untitled Colleen McGuinness comedy series for Apple TV+, is exploring a sale in recent months after receiving interest from multiple suitors including Apple, The Wall Street Journal reports citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Benjamin Mullin and Cara Lombardo for The Wall Street Journal:
People close to the situation say the company could be valued at as much $1 billion in a deal.
Hello Sunshine is working with investment bankers as it explores its options, the people familiar with the matter say. There is no guarantee the company will find a buyer.
Hello Sunshine is owned by Ms. Witherspoon and her partners, Seth Rodsky and Jim Toth, a former agent at Creative Artists Agency who is Ms. Witherspoon’s husband. The company’s management team also has equity in the venture.
AT&T Inc. also owns a stake in Hello Sunshine through its 2018 purchase of Otter Media. Emerson Collective, the philanthropic organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, also owns a stake.
A sale of Hello Sunshine would be a milestone in Ms. Witherspoon’s three-decade career, which has included major roles in films including “Legally Blonde,” “Wild” and “Election.” Ms. Witherspoon won the Academy Award for best actress in 2006 for her performance as June Carter in “Walk the Line,” the 2005 biopic of country music legend Johnny Cash.
MacDailyNews Take: Synergy.
Someone looks uncomfortable.
I really love this site and as a fairly significant shareholder of Apple for 20 years check it out everyday. That said, the comments on this site when it comes to Apple’s entertainment business are grossly naive. Let’s take Helllo Sunshine being valued at 1b and why Apple would be willing to pay that price for this relationship. So far, Hello Sunshine has produced a hit in The Morning Show and a programmer in the Octavia Spenser series. For that Helllo Sunshine and Resse, Jennifer and Steve get paid handsomely. Reese’s acting fees go to her not to the company. Her producing fees go to the company and are far less than her acting fees. Most importantly, Apple owns the these shows…not Hello Sunshine. In fact, Helllo Sunshine has no filmed content it outright owns…none. It also has a bandwidth problem as the only projects they have that have real value need to feature Reese in them and she only has so much time in her schedule and is getting very close to being over exposed. Little Fires Everywhere for Hulu suffers from the same financial problem. and was not very good. This company is not worth more than a 100m to anybody and it’s only worth that if you can charge all of Reese’s fees against the deal. If AMAZON paid 8.5 billion for MGM, a company I use to work at, and Apple passed (the correct decision as Amazon overpaid by at least 2b) they should have little lot no interest to buying Hello Sunshine. But Hollywood has swindle smart companies like Apple before. Hoe they stay the course with what they are doing with Apple TV+. The guys in charge are doing a great job and doing it in a very competitive market.
Sorry for the deep dive…thought it might Abe interesting to the four or five readers of theist that care about entrainment instead of the next iPhone launch which is far more important to the stock price.