MrBeast, the biggest content creator on YouTube, has announced that he is filming a game show for Amazon Prime Video and it promises the winner a $5 million cash prize, which could be the largest single payout ever in TV history.
On X (formerly Twitter), he wrote: “Big news gamers I’m going to be filming the largest game show in history and releasing it on Prime Video! Over 1,000 contestants, $5,000,000 prize, and many other world records.”
No details are available about what kinds of challenges Beast Games contestants will participate in. Prime Video has leveraged big-name creators to develop new shows in the past. Amazon Studios took Critical Role, a popular Dungeons & Dragons actual play series, and turned it into an animated series.
In 2021, MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, made a Squid Game in real life video for his YouTube channel. Then, Netflix released its own reality competition show, Squid Game: The Challenge, with a $4.65 million prize.
“On YouTube, I have to make videos around titles and thumbnails,” Donaldson said 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.” He will serve as executive producer of Beast Games, which will air exclusively on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories.
On his YouTube channel, which has 245 million subscribers, Donaldson often gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars to contestants for completing farcical tasks, like living in a grocery store for weeks. The problem is YouTube gives him access to a crowd that’s less than 30 years old. Most people over that age probably haven’t heard about him. But all that’s about to change for the North Carolina man.
