{"id":686836,"date":"2026-06-05T22:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686836\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:47:09","slug":"ed-simpson-launching-creator-venture-after-exiting-wheelhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686836\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Simpson Launching Creator Venture After Exiting Wheelhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Ed Simpson<\/a>, chief strategy officer of Calabasas Confidential producer Wheelhouse<\/a>, is launching his own investment venture in the creator economy world.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimpson, a longtime consigliere to Wheelhouse founder Brent Montgomery, left the company after working with the Pawn Stars producer for 15 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline understands Simpson is in talks to invest in a number of YouTube channels, eyeing the rapidly growing creator space for his own company. It comes as YouTube continues to grow as the world\u2019s largest streaming service and has started bringing together some of its top creators with advertisers directly, as highlighted at its recent Upfront event in New York last month.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimpson is expected to close his first deals over the coming weeks. His departure has been in the works for some time.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter moving to the U.S., he was the showrunner of ABC\u2019s Wife Swap before he joined Leftfield Pictures in 2012 as head of business development, where he focused on M&A and was heavily involved in the company\u2019s acquisition by ITV in 2014. After Montgomery was named CEO of ITV America in 2015, Simpson became EVP, Business Development and International for the U.S. arm of the British broadcaster and producer.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Montgomery launched Wheelhouse in 2018, Simpson was part of the founding team as Chief Strategy Officer.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis interest in the creator economy is not new, he launched Wheelhouse DNA, an influencer-focused content division that created original content for digital native talent across platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram in 2021 with stars such as Nikita Dragun.<\/p>\n

\n\tWheelhouse recently acquired Anomaly\u00a0Entertainment, which was founded by former Discovery execs Matthew Kelly and Michael Sorensen and is behind a raft of Shark Week specials, and did an overall deal with Kismet Media. The company is also behind Netflix\u2019s Million Dollar Secret, America\u2019s Sweethearts and King of Collectibles, A&E\u2019s Duck Dynasty: The Revival and upcoming series including Bravo\u2019s Secrets, Lives, Texas, Wives and Discovery\u2019s Roast My Rental.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimpson said, \u201cWhat an incredible ride the last 15 years have been building numerous successful businesses with Brent and together with the Wheelhouse team, and I am thankful for every experience and opportunity. We\u2019ve navigated so much together, including the seismic changes in our industry \u2013 but those have also opened doors to new models for growth and so I\u2019m eager and excited to expand my work across a broader portfolio of ventures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWheelhouse CEO Brent Montgomery added, \u201cIt\u2019s always difficult when a longtime partner and friend\u00a0moves on to start a new chapter; this one feels especially bittersweet. That said, I\u2019m extremely proud of what we accomplished during that time. Now is the moment to support Ed as he steps out on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Ed Simpson, chief strategy officer of Calabasas Confidential producer Wheelhouse, is launching his own investment venture in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,298440,88,171618],"class_list":["post-686836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-ed-simpson","tag-entertainment","tag-wheelhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}