Simon Cowell Hunts for the Next Big Boy Band in Netflix Docuseries

Simon Cowell is on the hunt for the next big boy band in the first trailer for the pop kingmaker’s new Netflix docuseries, Simon Cowell: The Next Act.

The man behind the megastar groups One Direction, Fifth Harmony, and Little Mix takes cameras on a behind-the-scenes journey as he searches the United Kingdom for potential stars. Sixteen lucky young men will be brought to Miami, where the music executive and his team will put the hopefuls through the paces to see who will make the final cut. 

The ruthless and direct talent judge, who has appeared on American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent, said he wanted to return to his roots, developing young artists. “As much as I love my job on TV, I miss where I started, signing artists and working with bands,” Cowell says in the trailer, which dropped on Monday. “There is a massive opportunity: I am going to find a new boy band. If this goes wrong, it will be Simon Cowell has lost it.”

The stakes are high in the six-episode docuseries, which will air on the streaming platform on Dec. 10, as in-fighting amongst the contestants plays out on screen. Cowell also seemed pushed to the brink by the process: He’s seen in the trailer receiving an IV drip for exhaustion as he confesses the “chances of this working are less than 10 percent.”

Cowell announced his search for the next big boy band last summer, hosting open-call auditions in London, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Dublin. “There’s always a high degree of risk, and I genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen,” Cowell said at the time. “There is no guaranteed path to success — anything can happen, but that’s what’s exciting for me, and that’s why I’m doing this.”