How Hello Sunshine’s Lauren Neustadter Chooses Where Projects Land: They Must ‘Love It Like We Love It’

It took a while for some of Lauren Neustadter’s projects to see the light of day. But now a host of Hello Sunshine projects, some from deals made during or before the pandemic, are out in the world.

The production company’s president of film and television and key creative partner of founder Reese Witherspoon saw “Daisy Jones & the Six,” adapted from a book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, debut on Amazon’s Prime Video. April will see two more book-based limited series, “Tiny Beautiful Things“ starring Kathryn Hahn and “The Last Thing He Told Me” starring Jennifer Garner, the former based off of Cheryl Strayed’s book of advice column responses and the latter based off Laura Dave’s novel.

“The process of developing is incredibly gratifying, but also incredibly intricate, and it requires a lot of attention to detail,” Neustadter told TheWrap for this week’s Office With a View. “One of the things that we always talk about with our team is great movies and great television shows always begin with great scripts.”

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It helps that Neustadter loves to read. It’s one of the first things she does every morning, and the basis of much of her job, from deciding what works to adapt for film or TV projects to preparing for key meetings. Reading closely is also a way she tests partners as she considers streaming or other distribution deals.

“We don’t have a first-look deal. We don’t have any overall commitment. We’re really flexible in terms of being able to sell to anybody,” Neustadter said. “One of the things that is the most exciting and ultimately gratifying is being able to take a project that we deeply love into the marketplace and really feel who loves it like we love it.”

Neustadter shared how she remains present in the different stages of her work, from acquiring hotly contested books and manuscripts to watching cuts of scenes once production has started. She also shared how Hello Sunshine struck a recent deal to adapt “Maybe Next Time” by Cesca Major with Apple Original Films.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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What does a typical day at Hello Sunshine look like for you?
Almost every day of my life starts around five o’clock in the morning, and I start reading because I do my very best reading when the rest of the world is sleeping. I do better focusing early in the morning. I try really hard to take my kids to school every day.

What do you read in the morning?
The reading is really the development work. I’m reading either a new manuscript that we’re considering, or I’m reading a script for a feature film, or an episode of television, or I’m reading a rewrite to see how notes were addressed.

Tomorrow, I’m going out to have a lunch with an actress. We’re going to be talking about a piece of material that I have been working on, but in truth it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve really been focused on that draft. I will be re-reading that draft tomorrow morning before I go and have that lunch.

How do you decide which streamer gets which project?
When we’re engaging with manuscripts, the very first question we ask ourselves, is “Do we love it?” If the answer is yes, then the very next question that we’re asking ourselves is: “What is the best way to tell this story? Sometimes the answer is it’s an ongoing TV series. Sometimes the answer is it’s a limited series. “Little Fires Everywhere” is a perfect example: The house burns down. The story is over. Elena has really learned her lesson, and we feel like it’s an incredibly satisfying conclusion. So it is an episodic structure with a very clear ending. So that’s a limited series. If it’s a movie, does it have a clear beginning, middle and end? That’s the three-act structure that signals if it’s a feature.

Then we think beyond that: Where’s the best home for this? Sometimes we have a very clear sense, and other times, we feel like there are a lot of places that it could really work well. There are a lot of people that we think will love it.

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How do you test whether people love material the same way you do?
Usually we’ve got a piece of material that everybody is reading or engaging with. In the case of two different projects that we had, we were starting with a magnificent novel [with] “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me.” For both of those, everyone was able to read the book, and so we were coming into the conversation knowing how much we loved the book and being able to really talk about what we envisioned for the adaptation. We got to experience how other people connected to the book and feel that love.

For “Little Fires Everywhere,” it was pre-COVID, so we were in a conference room together, and Hulu really won the show. It was definitely a very competitive bidding war. Hulu came in and they call themselves the Hulu Book Club. They came in and they read their favorite passages and talked about why they loved the book and what they imagined for the show. They told us about what they envisioned when it came to marketing, and it was such a love letter to the project, the way that they presented.

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What goes into the process of adapting a book?
I’ve been reading books and scripts coming up on 20 years. Evaluating material is like a muscle: It strengthens over time. When you read things, you get a clearer sense. The more you read, the more you can feel it in your gut, in your heart and in your soul. It’s love at first read. “The Last Thing You Told Me” was love at first pitch. When [Witherspoon and I] talk about something and we’re not sure that it’s the piece of material that we want to be focusing on, we don’t second-guess ourselves. If we don’t feel it in our heart and soul that this is a project for us, then the best thing for the author, the best thing for the writer if it’s a screenplay, is to find the producer that really does feel that undeniable passion and connection, but when we feel it we just we go after it with everything we’ve got.

Everyone else saw [“From Scratch” and “Daisy Jones”] as movies, and we imagined them as television shows. When I’m evaluating a piece of material, when I’m feeling the rhythm of it, it either unfolds very clearly as episodes — I remember both for “The Last Thing He Told Me” and for “Little Fires Everywhere,” these are such propulsive mysteries. I remember with both of those writing down “End of Episode One,” “End of Episode Two,” “End of Episode Three.” I did it with “From Scratch” too on the PDF. It was so clear because you can feel the rhythm of it, and you’re like, Oh, my gosh, what an incredible way to end an episode because of where the chapter hits. You can feel it.

In a lot of ways, novels feel like symphonies as they unfold. It’s how many movements are there, and you you can feel the rhythm of it and I think that that’s one of the things that’s so magical and and exciting. It’s such an incredible thing that we get to be a part of the arc of really appreciating what a novelist does, and then imagining what it could look like if it was brought to life on screen.

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What can we expect for “Maybe Next Time”? That’s a big book deal you recently made, with the film adaptation headed to Apple.
We’re in very early stages. That was another one that was quite competitive. There were a lot of conversations happening. We got on the phone with Cesca Major, the author, and we loved her. My [colleague] Ashley Strumwasser read the book and identified it. Her assistant Nicolette loved it as well. When they read the book, they both texted me pictures of themselves crying. We Zoomed with Cesca, who’s in England. We were all very emotional. I will say, my tears came out on the Zoom. We showed her the picture of Nicolette, who was the first to cry.

It’s about this woman who has really important lessons to learn and lessons that we all really connect with. I felt so moved as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a woman who’s juggling a job she loves and a whole bunch of other things. I connected so deeply to the novel and and what was really wonderful was when we sent it to Jessie Henderson at Apple, she felt exactly the same. That is exactly the thing that I’ve been talking about the thing that you hope you’ll have for every piece of material, when you find the right home for it, [it’s] all about having an executive that really loves it and is invested and wants to make sure that we’re making the very, very best version of it.

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