Let’s be honest: we all love Reese Witherspoon and anything she appears in. From Legally Blonde to Walk The Line, the Hollywood legend has turned out a catalogue of brilliant performances over the years and won us over every time.

But while the million-watt film star can command a feature in front of the camera, these days, she calls the shots behind it too. In 2016, Witherspoon founded a media company, Hello Sunshine, with the aim of centring stories by and for women, and has proven herself to be a formidable producer. With Witherspoon’s voracious love of books and uncanny talent for spinning a compelling book-to-screen adaptation, the company has turned out a stream of smash hits, including the films Gone Girl and Wild, as well as buzzy TV shows such as HBO’s Big Little Lies, Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, and Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere.

Yes, it’s no exaggeration to say that Hello Sunshine has revolutionised the streaming landscape, and its upcoming projects are set to be just as exciting. This week, the adaptation of the bestselling novel Where The Crawdads Sing, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, lands on the silver screen, while the Amazon series Daisy Jones And The Six is in production. Quite simply, Witherspoon has a killer instinct for a commercial hit.

As Witherspoon’s media empire continues to expand and thrive, there’s no better time to revisit the best productions from Hello Sunshine – and more importantly, find out where you can watch them right now.

Based on Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling novel, Wild tells the story of a young woman, Cheryl (Witherspoon), who embarks on a 1,000-mile hike along the Pacific Coast Trail to reflect on the dissolution of her marriage, her drug addiction and the death of her mother (Laura Dern). With absolutely no experience of the great outdoors and fuelled by sheer determination, the film is a gritty portrait of a woman on a mission to mend her messed-up life – and it earned Witherspoon an Academy Award nomination for her career-defining performance.

Wild is available to rent on Amazon Prime

Adapted from the Liane Moriarty novel of the same name and with a star-studded cast, the first season of HBO’s critically acclaimed series racked up an impressive 14 Emmy nominations and took home eight trophies. The show follows five women in Monterey who become embroiled in a murder investigation, and it was praised for dealing with powerful topics such as domestic violence, divorce, child-rearing struggles and ageing gracefully. As if Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Zoë Kravitz wasn’t enough of a draw, the second season of the show brought the one and only Meryl Streep to the mix. 

Big Little Lies is available to stream on Now

Twisty-turny psychological thriller Gone Girl reimagined the genre of missing person cases when it hit the big screen in 2014. Based upon the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn, the film follows former New York-based writer Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his glamorous wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), when she suddenly and suspiciously goes missing on the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary. In the ensuing media frenzy, the image of the Dunnes’ happy union begins to crumble, leading everyone to question who Nick and Amy really are. Not to mention, this film has one of the best plot twists we’ve seen in recent times.

Gone Girl is available to stream on Netflix

Scheming, scandal and ripped-from-the-headlines storylines: The Morning Show made waves when it kicked off the launch of Apple TV+ in 2019.

Inspired by Brian Stelter’s book Top Of The Morning: Inside The Cutthroat World Of Morning TV, the show explores the ruthless world of morning news and the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning. Told through the lens of seasoned newsreader Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and aspiring journalist Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), the drama follows the freefall of an early morning newscast in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal, and the unique challenges of the men and women who must continue to carry out this daily televised ritual.

The Morning Show is available to stream on Apple TV+

Based on the 2017 bestselling novel of the same by Celeste Ng, Hulu’s gripping miniseries Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of two women, Elena Richardson (Witherspoon), a wealthy mother of four, and Mia Warren (Kerry Washington), an enigmatic single mother, whose lives become inextricably linked in Shaker Heights, Ohio. A masterful study of race, class, motherhood, female ambition and sexual politics, the series earned Washington the Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2020.

Little Fires Everywhere is available to stream on Amazon Prime 

Image: Fox Searchlight