Advisor Studio: Inside Hello Sunshine - A High-Level Perspective with Lauren Neustadter
About this Advisor Studio
In Advisor Studio sessions, Sundance Collab Advisors share field experiences and insights into their specific areas of craft, including writing, directing, documentary filmmaking, and producing for film and TV.
Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, has produced critically acclaimed films and television series like The Morning Show, Little Fires Everywhere, Daisy Jones & The Six, From Scratch, and Where the Crawdads Sing, among others. Named one of Time Magazine’s most influential companies, Hello Sunshine seeks to broaden perspectives and change the narrative for women through story. If you want to learn more about Hello Sunshine, join us for this Advisor Studio with their President of Film & TV, Lauren Neustadter.
In this one hour session, Lauren will share more about Hello Sunshine’s mission, what she looks for in writers, and her advice from the executive’s perspective on how to have a successful, collaborative experience as a filmmaker.
Advisor StudioTeam
Lauren Neustadter
Panelist
Lauren Neustadter is President of Film and Television at Hello Sunshine. Since joining the company in 2017 as Head of Film and Television, she has executive produced numerous television projects including three seasons of the Emmy award-winning series The Morning Show (Apple TV+), three seasons of the NAACP award-winning series Truth Be Told (Apple TV+), and the five-time Emmy nominated limited series Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu). She also served as a Supervising Producer on Season 2 of HBO’s Emmy Award-winning series Big Little Lies.
Neustadter’s most recent television work includes executive producing adaptations of the Reese’s Book Club picks The Last Thing He Told Me (Apple TV+) and From Scratch (Netflix), plus Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu) and Daisy Jones & the Six (Prime Video) which received a combined total of 11 Emmy nominations. She also executive produced My Kind of Country, Apple TV+’s first music competition series, and the psychological thriller series Surface (Apple TV+). In 2022, Neustadter and Reese Witherspoon were named TV Producers of the Year by The Hollywood Reporter. Neustadter has been listed as one THR’s Power 100 Women In Entertainment, and she has been included in Variety’s Power of Women list.
On the film side, Neustadter produced the adaptation of one of Reese’s Book Club’s most beloved selections, the chart-topping New York Times bestselling novel Where the Crawdads Sing (3000 Pictures/Sony), which stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and surpassed $100 million at the worldwide box office. She also produced Aline Brosh McKenna’s feature directorial debut Your Place or Mine (Netflix) and Something From Tiffany's (Prime Video) starring Zoey Deutch, both of which earned the top spot on their respective platforms. She is currently in post production on the wedding comedy Cordially Invited, starring Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, for Prime Video.
Before joining the team at Hello Sunshine, Neustadter spent over a decade working in film as an executive at Miramax then Twentieth Century Fox (with a producing stint in-between). In 2011, she left the feature world to become an executive at FOX network, where she oversaw shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mindy Project, Lethal Weapon and 24, among others.
Neustadter lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.
Katherine Street
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer
Katherine "Kat" Street is an LA-based award-winning filmmaker and Philadelphia native. A cinephile at heart, she writes female-driven stories with complex (oftentimes damaged) main characters, centered around self-discovery, self-love, and belonging.
She has written numerous short-form projects, including original shorts, pilots, and features. She wrote and directed the dramatic short film “Cycles,” which received festival recognition in both acting and best romantic short. She also created her award-winning flagship web series "The New Adult,” which is currently streaming on Kweli TV.
Kat is a Stowe Story Lab SAGIndie Fellow and a participant in the BlackMagic Collective Emerging Filmmakers Initiative. In 2021, she founded the Black Film Challenge, a project that showcases filmmakers of African descent and the movies they create.
She earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a concentration in Cinematography and has literary representation with Yak Yak Mgmt.