Simon Cowell Faces Career-Ending Netflix Crisis

When announced he was launching a new ­ show that would follow his audacious bid to find a new boyband that could match the success of , there were rumours that it was going to be called The Midas Touch.

Those reports were quickly shot down by Cowell’s abrasive PR operation, and when his six-part show launched last December, it was given a more modest title, Simon Cowell: The Next Act.

The series followed the former judge’s journey to put together a boyband five years after the closure of his music label, SyCo.

In a similar format to his previous shows, Pop Idol, and then The X Factor, he held auditions across the UK and Ireland to find the next ‘big thing’.

Cowell, never known to do things by halves, even donned a pair of dungarees and scaled a ladder as part of the show’s marketing drive, to put up a huge billboard in London which read: ‘Simon needs you. Future megastars wanted for new boyband. No time wasters.’

Announcing the project, Simon wrote on social media: ‘Every generation deserves a megastar boyband, and I don’t think there has been one with the success of One Direction in over 14 years.’

Eventually, largely thanks to Netflix’s generous budget, he found his seven aspiring singers – Cruz Lee-Ojo, Danny Bretherton, Hendrik Christoffersen, John Fadare, Josh Olliver, Nicolas Alves and Sean Hayden. And so December 10 was born, creatively named after the date the Netflix series aired. The group released their first single, Run My Way, a month later on January 30.

Of course, Cowell did everything to ensure their success. He hired the same management team that catapulted Dua Lipa to fame, as well as a publicist who has masterminded Taylor Swift’s success. However, his efforts have not been enough.

Simon, 66, will surely be relieved that he didn’t call his show The Midas Touch. Because December 10 are hardly pop gold, having limped into the charts at number 72, shifting just 6,300 units (that’s physical sales, digital downloads and stream­ing) within seven days.

For Cowell, who revels in his reputation as a music genius, it will be very disappointing – if not humiliating. Especially coming after his enthusiastic promises that the band would replicate One Direction – who found fame on The X Factor in 2010 and went on to sell more than 200 million records worldwide.

Music industry insiders have described Cowell’s latest project as a ‘catastrophe’ and a ‘disaster’. Even their future at record label EMI/Universal is no longer as secure as Cowell would have perhaps hoped. As for Cowell, his own contract with Netflix is looking rather shaky.

Industry insiders say a second series of The Next Act is now hanging in the balance, as Netflix bosses ponder whether Cowell’s reign as pop’s sorcerer supreme is over.

One source tells me: ‘Simon was so hopeful that he could replicate One Direction. That was the premise upon which the Netflix show was built.

‘There were many 1D comparisons used for publicity around the show and the band, but the reality is that his new band are just not there yet – and may never be.

‘With all that publicity, Simon’s name attached, a major record label and a ­Netflix documentary behind them, expectations were always high. Instead, all it has done is highlight how the music business has changed, and make it seem as though Simon has lost his Midas touch.’

Friends of Cowell claim that the very suggestion will be devastating for him.