Candle Media, the increasingly challenged, Blackstone-backed production company roll-up, has hired the investment bank Moelis & Co. with an urgent request: Figure out how to prop up Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Yes, the same Hello Sunshine that Candle infamously bought at an insane $900 million valuation in 2021. They don’t want to sell, I’m told, but if there’s a credible offer, they’d talk. The financials of the film and TV production/book club company are just getting to the point where they need to do something, and Candle’s previous efforts to source and purchase production units have slowed in recent months.    

Candle confirms it hired Moelis “to explore specific potential acquisitions in the live-action content space in order to give the company greater scale and operating efficiencies.” But a rep is downplaying the connection to the Hello Sunshine troubles, insisting that more scale “is the only reason Moelis was hired.”