Beast Games will start with more than 1,000 contestants and reward its winner with a $5 million prize.
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YouTuber MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has struck a deal with Prime Video to host a new reality competition series called Beast Games. The show will have 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million reward, which the press release claims is “the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming.” There aren’t any details yet about what kinds of challenges Beast Games contestants will participate in.
It’s a remarkable turn of events, even for someone who’s hosted many similar competitions on his YouTube channel, like recent ones where people from every country competed for $250,000 or a group of people from ages 1 to 100 went head-to-head for $500,000.
In 2021, Donaldson made a Squid Game in real life video for his YouTube channel a few months after the hit Korean show debuted. Then, Netflix released its own reality competition show, Squid Game: The Challenge, with a $4.65 million prize. Now, Donaldson has his own reality competition for Amazon’s platform.
Donaldson will serve as executive producer of Beast Games, which will air exclusively on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories.
Puck reported on rumors of Donaldson’s deal with Prime Video in January.
“On YouTube, I have to make videos around titles and thumbnails,” Donaldson says in an interview on The Colin and Samir Show. “But on this show, I can do whatever I want. I can just make good content.” As viewership constantly fluctuates on the platform, Donaldson says he has made some tweaks to his videos to get more eyeballs on his content, including slowing down videos and focusing more on storytelling.
