Reese Witherspoon Selling Media Empire for Nearly $1B

Reese Witherspoon, in a move as savvy and startling as Elle Woods getting into Harvard in Legally Blonde, is selling a media empire worth nearly a billion dollars. Like Elle, Witherspoon decided to be the change she wanted to see in the world, and started a production and content company—Hello Sunshine—to tell women’s stories, Deadline reports. Apparently, that’s an idea whose time has come, and equity company Blackstone is backing a new company that will take over Hello Sunshine, the Wall Street Journal reports. Witherspoon founded her company in 2016. In addition to Reese’s Book Club, an Instagram feed that builds audiences for books written by women, it produces shows and movies like HBO’s Big Little Lies and Gone Girl.

Witherspoon said in a statement the yet-unnamed new company will help “creators of all backgrounds and experiences to tell their stories,” while the executives at the new company had a more practical approach. Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, formerly of Disney, said, “Hello Sunshine is a perfect fit for our vision of a new, next generation entertainment, technology, and commerce company,” CNN reports. In other words, it will be a moneymaker in a media landscape hungry for new streaming content. (More Reese Witherspoon stories.)