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Witherspoon’s involvement in Hello Sunshine will come via her
production company Pacific Standard, which counts films “Wild,”
“Gone Girl,” and the upcoming HBO series “Big Little Lies” among
its credits. As a subsidiary of Hello Sunshine, Pacific Standard
will continue to make TV shows and films, but now will also
branch out to include shorter-run digital content tailored for
social media.
AT&T partnered with longtime media executive Peter Chernin to
form Otter Media in 2014 as a way to capitalize on the booming
streaming video industry, committing more than $500 million to
buy and or launch new companies.
The new company could give AT&T an early stake hold in a
marketplace currently light on content made both for and by
women. A study by USC-Annenberg found that female characters
made up only 28.7 percent of all speaking roles in film, while
women accounted for just 15 percent of directors.
Witherspoon launched Pacific Standard with her producing partner
Bruna Papandrea in 2012 as a means to get more women both behind
and in front of the camera in more prominent roles. Papandrea
recently left to start her own venture.
Otter Media’s portfolio includes digital media company
Fullscreen Media (which owns digital studio Rooster Teeth),
social marketing agency McBeard, and Gunpowder & Sky, the
digital studio launched by former Viacom executive Van Toffler.
Otter Media also has invested in the Japanese anime and gaming
space with two streaming video services in Crunchyroll and VRV.
Earlier this year, Chernin Group also acquired sports media
company Barstool Sports.
AT&T has been in the process of acquiring Time Warner Inc, a
deal expected to close next year should it pass regularly
hurdles. Last week, Time Warner's studio Warner Bros. agreed to
acquire all of digital media company Machinima, a competitor to
Fullscreen.
Kerry Tucker will serve as chief executive of Hello Sunshine.
Tucker most recently engineered the sale of The Video Genome
Project, a content-recommendation start-up, to Hulu.
Seth Rodsky, founding partner of Strand Equity Partners, is
partnered with Witherspoon on the deal and will join the Hello
Sunshine board.
(This story corrects 6th paragraph to show Chernin Group, not
Otter Media, acquired Barstool Sports.)
(Reporting by Tim Baysinger; Editing by David Gregorio)
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