Ed Simpson: Celebs Rumors

Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse has some new investors.

McKinley Franklin editor Hulu has ordered a new social experiment competition series “Got to Get Out” from Wheelhouse. The format will showcase participants living in a mansion for 10 days as they vie for a cash prize that increases by $1 each second they’re in the game. As contestants compete in physical and mental challenges, more money will be added to “the pot,” with up to $1 million at stake.

Hulu has ordered Got to Get Out, a competition series from Wheelhouse that was created by Glenn Hugill (Deal or No Deal, The Mole), the president of Wheelhouse’s UK arm.

It’s a wrap for Buying Beverly Hills Season 2 filming. The Netflix occu-series has concluded filming for the second season of the show that follows agents and clients within Mauricio Umansky’s The Agency in Beverly Hills.

Mauricio Umansky and The Agency are opening the doors for a second season.

Netflix is doubling down on property.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterJimmy Kimmel and Brent Montgomery’s media company Wheelhouse has taken a stake in former Food Network president Courtney White’s new food and lifestyle-focused production company Butternut Films, which will now be renamed Butternut under the joint venture.As president of Butternut, which was launched when White exited Food Network this spring, White will collaborate with Wheelhouse leadership and across all Wheelhouse divisions — including Wheelhouse Entertainment, marketing arm Wheelhouse Labs, digital division Wheelhouse DNA, and investment department Wheelhouse 360 — “leveraging her deep production and creative expertise in culinary, home, design and lifestyle programming, and her wide-ranging relationships with talent and brands,” per Wheelhouse. Butternut is focused on creating original content for all platforms, “working with a range of established, emerging and home-grown talent.”White and her Butternut team will continue to work out of a clapboard barn on her family’s Southport, Conn., fresh-cut flower farm, Butternut Farm, as well as Wheelhouse’s New York and Los Angeles headquarters, and have full access to Wheelhouse’s large-scale campus in Stamford, Conn., dubbed “The Village.”The Wheelhouse-Butternut joint venture was brokered by Wheelhouse chief strategy officer Ed Simpson.“The single, common element across all successful lifestyle content is passion — talent must project it, creators must harness it, audiences must feel it,” White said.

How do you turn the latest crop of social media influencers – many with tens of millions of followers – into traditional television stars? That’s been the question that networks and producers have been asking for years.