Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Sets Two Novels For Screen

Reese Witherspoon’s new company Hello Sunshine has set up to produce the Gail Honeyman novel Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and the Catherine Steadman novel Something in the Water.

The latter will be adapted by Julia Cox and was acquired by Fox 2000 for Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter to produce with Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey and Jaclyn Huntling. Witherspoon will develop that one solely to produce, but Eleanor Oliphant will be a potential star vehicle for her.

Witherspoon, who produced the book-generated films Gone Girl and Wild and the HBO series Big Little Lies before splitting with Pacific Standard partner Bruna Papandrea, formed Hello Sunshine and set Neustader to be Head of Film and TV, with the goal of continuing to find female-centric literary properties for film and TV projects.

Both of these books are by female first-time authors. Eleanor Oliphant is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine who goes from living a lonely life to realizing the only way to survive is to open your heart. The novel was just published by the Penguin Random House imprint Pamela Dorman Books. Something in the Water is about a woman whose life is on the upswing. She’s about to get married and is establishing a successful career as a documentary filmmaker. Then she’s thrown a curveball that challenges her ethics and priorities and her life begins to slip from her grasp. APA sold the book and reps the scribe and author. The novel will be published by Bantam in the U.S. and Simon & Schuster in the UK after making a splash at the London Book Fair.

Eleanor Oliphant author Honeyman is repped by The Artists Partnership, Emily Hayward Whitlock and Madeleine Milburn Ltd.

(Deadline)