Lauren Neustadter and Reese Witherspoon are having a big summer, with back-to-back high-profile releases: the July debut of the “Legally Blonde” prequel series “Elle” on Amazon’s Prime Video and the Anya Taylor-Joy-directed action miniseries “Lucky” on Apple TV.

Both shows, which premiered just two weeks apart, are produced by Witherspoon’s media company, Hello Sunshine, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall. And up next, the production company behind “Daisy Jones & the Six” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” has the third season of HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” the release of Sony Pictures’ “The Nightingale,” starring Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning, and the second season of “Elle” (which has already finished filming) to look forward to in 2027.

It’s a packed slate that’s the culmination of nearly a decade of work by Witherspoon and the Hello Sunshine team, led by film and television president and director Neustadter.

“In the beginning, part of the mission was to create opportunities for women to shine and create opportunities for them to shine in front of and behind the camera, as members of our team,” Neustadter says. Variety. “Everything was equally important to us, and it was really a core part of Hello Sunshine’s mission when we talked about ‘What do we want this company to be?’ Whether they are scripts or books, whether as directors, whether as department heads of our production.”

From “The Morning Show” to “Little Fires Everywhere,” Neustadter says she and Witherspoon have been focused on finding “exactly the right people to bring these projects to life,” including Jonathan Tropper of “Lucky” and “Elle” showrunners Laura Kittrell and Caroline Dries.

Neustadter says this partner-focused strategy has led to the success of Hello Sunshine, as well as preparing the team for even bigger projects ahead, including the return of “Big Little Lies,” which premiered in 2017.

“The reality is that Hello Sunshine didn’t exist when the first season of ‘Big Little Lies’ was made. It was Reese and Bruna. [Papandrea] and Pacific Standard and David E. Kelley, and they did the most incredible job ever,” Neustadter says. “And we had the privilege of being invited to the second season, and also the third season. They are the most inspired and inspiring team, and I think there are a lot of things in that program that are extraordinary and special. And one of them is that it is a true team effort.”

The third season of “Big Little Lies” will be based on the upcoming sequel to author Liane Moriarity’s book, “Big Little Truths,” and features the returns of Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern, among others.

“HBO is the most incredible partner with this incredible production team, and I think we all care so much about each of these incredible characters,” Neustadter says. “So it’s a privilege to just be in the conversation and think about what the next chapter looks like for these extraordinary women in Monterey. But it’s truly a team effort and I know season 3 is going to be incredible.”

Read more from VarietyIn-depth interview with Neustadter below.

Hello Sunshine has a lot of experience with book-to-screen adaptations. How do you approach the development process for the third season of “Big Little Lies,” given that the second season of “Big Little Lies” went off-book and continued beyond the source material, but now the third season will build on the upcoming sequel, “Big Little Truths”?

One of the things we try to do with every project is make sure everyone involved loves it like we do. “Big Little Lies” is an incredible example of that, because I think everyone cares incredibly about these characters. And so we are 100% immersed in the book and in a thoughtful conversation about the adaptation and the characters. You also have the gift of having actresses who know, love and have lived these characters, who are in the conversation about how to take it from book to screen, which is always an incredible privilege. I think that makes the material very rich. So I’m very excited about everything that’s happening and all the conversations that are happening.

What will next year be like for Hello Sunshine? What will be the next step in production?

We are excited about “Big Little Lies.” I hope that we are in production on a third season of “Elle” and that the second season of “Elle” comes out. The fifth season of “The Morning Show” will be released. “The Nightingale” is coming out and then we have a couple more movies that we’re working on that will hopefully be in production on the 27th. So I should be busy.

“Lucky” is a different project for Hello Sunshine as it is an action-packed show. Did that require things that previous shows and movies didn’t?

It feels like with the landscape of each of these episodes you are with her as she runs away. You see her as a chameleon in a way that I think is fascinating and intriguing and actually quite unique in a limited series like this. We fell in love with this book and really with this character, and also with the complicated relationship he had with his father.

We always love to stretch. We always love going to an area we haven’t been to before, exploring, being curious, and bringing these characters to life, but also teaming up with people who have very specific superpowers. So Jonathan Tropper was that person. He is a person we greatly admired, both as a screenwriter and as an author. You can perform this action at full speed in a way that, frankly, was new to us. So we knew we needed an expert in that field to come in and design these cool sequences and think big about what it could be. It was incredibly important for us, for Hello Sunshine, for the [future] readers of the book, who would be right because the book had not yet been published. We needed to protect the heart, soul and vulnerability of this character, so we needed a series creator who would do both.

Even at the end, when we’re sitting in the mix and you’re calibrating the sound, and I’m thinking about how Lucky breathes. And how are we emotionally with her? And Jonathan says, “Can we make the shot a little louder? This explosion, I really want to feel it.” And it was just amazing. And when I think about “Daisy Jones & the Six,” it was similar musically.

What have you thought of the response to “Elle” from current “Legally Blonde” fans?

It’s everything I expected. I feel like women just come up to me and say thank you for putting on a happy show. And one of the things that Reese really felt was that, particularly for a younger generation of women, the messages they were getting on social media weren’t necessarily telling them that they were wonderful and perfect just the way they are and capable of anything they dreamed of. I think that, without being saccharine, “Elle” really reminds us that we are good enough and that it’s okay to be different. And I think Elle herself embodies that. I also think [her mother] Eve [played by June Diane Raphael] It really embodies that.

One of the things that I love, and it’s been lovely and wonderful to see the response to the character of Eva, who we very intentionally designed as a character that was kind of a love letter to those of us who saw the movie in theaters when it came out, and now we’re in a different phase of our lives. And I think Eva is, for us, a woman who is dealing with a different set of issues and asking questions about identity when she’s 40 and moving to a different place.

One of the things we always try to do is connect with women and reflect their lived experience. And I hope “Elle” does it in a happy way. In a way, I think it’s a show that women can relax and enjoy. We just wanted to give the audience and fans of “Legally Blonde” something delicious and something they could connect with. And I hope we achieved it. Someone I went to high school with, who now lives in North Carolina, texted me and said, “My daughter is obsessed with the show, we’re savoring it and we watch an episode together every night.”

“Elle” has already concluded production on its second season. How did you make the decision to go straight to season 2 before season 1 aired, knowing there would be no audience feedback to use?

We finished season 2 before we had our press and premiere around season 1. And a lot of that, to be very honest with you, had to do with the weather, because one of the things that was challenging was that there was a lot of sun in season 1, and we needed to calibrate it with visual effects. And we were really trying to get a feel for Seattle. And we recognized that if we waited for a typical period, we would be looking at the beginning of summer, so that would be glorious. You’re not going to get gloomy skies. It’s not going to rain on you. You’re not going to get the items. First, it’s a testament to Amazon’s faith in the show and their enthusiasm, and when they saw the cuts, I think they were really excited.

And we thought, come on, let’s keep this momentum going. We knew we wanted to make each season like a semester for “Elle,” so we started with the first semester of her third year and then went straight into the second. It made a lot of sense in terms of story and momentum to continue. I think the show really benefited from not having a lot of downtime. I think emotionally, everyone was very connected to where their character was at the end of Season 1 as we move into Season 2.

How do you balance your workload with so many new and ongoing projects? How involved is Reese in the day-to-day life when she stars in some of them and not others?

We love to be busy. It’s something we have in common and we also have the most incredible team. I admire many things about Reese, but one of the things I admire most is that she is very determined about hiring people who are great at what they do and then trusting them to do their jobs. So she’s an amazing partner. She is certainly involved in everything. She is reading all the books. She’s reading all the scripts. She’s seeing all the cuts. She is giving us her opinion.

At the same time, if we’re moving at a fast pace, I’ll reach out to her and say, I want you to know that this is what’s happening and I feel really good about it, and she says, “I feel really good about it, too,” and we go. Particularly at a time like this, she’s starring on “The Morning Show,” we’re launching two shows, and we’re picking up a new book that we’re really excited about. We’re trying to juggle all of these things gracefully. And I think trust is a very important part. I will say that an equally important part is having an amazing team. We have people who started out as assistants who now run the sets. They help us make all of this happen, and it’s so exciting to think about everything we’ve accomplished in the last decade.

This interview has been edited and condensed.