Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Picked up by Kevin Mayer and Tom Stagg’s New Media Company

Rachel Uranga

Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Picked up by Kevin  Mayer and Tom Stagg’s New Media Company
The women-focused media company run by Reese Witherspoon, Hello Sunshine, is being sold to former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs' media startup. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed but according to the Wall Street Journal, it's valued at $900 million.

Mayer and Staggs' yet-to-be-named company is backed by investment capital group Blackstone. The acquisition is the first by the new company, which hopes to use Hello Sunshine to establish itself as an independent, creator-friendly media company.

Launched in 2016, Hello Sunshine produces series for Apple, Hulu, HBO and Amazon. It's best known for "Big Little Lies," "Little Fires Everywhere," and "The Morning Show," but it also creates a host of unscripted shows, and is in production with several films including an adaption of the novel 'Where the Crawdads Sing,' one of Reese's Book Club picks.

Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine's CEO Sarah Harden and its senior management will continue to oversee day-to-day operations. Witherspoon and Harden will also join the company's board.

The cash shelled out for the five-year-old company speaks to the soaring value of high-end content as streamers compete to fill their bottomless libraries. Media companies have increasingly foregone licensing out their productions in lieu of retaining them for their owned-and-operated streaming platforms. That could create an opportunity for an independent studio with no ties to a specific streamer.

Fellow star-driven independent production studio, LeBron James' SpringHill Company, has also been rumored to be exploring a sale. Earlier this year Amazon acquired MGM Studios for $8.45 billion to fill the pipes of its Amazon Prime Video.

"This is a unique time in our world where the intersection of art, commerce and media makes it possible for these creators to tell their stories and Hello Sunshine is here to put a spotlight on their amazing creations," Witherspoon said in announcing the deal.

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Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever
Photo by Samson Amore

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Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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