YouTuber MrBeast is entering the world of television, launching a new reality game show on Amazon Prime Video.
The massively popular creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has inked a deal with Amazon MGM to produce a competition-based game show called Beast Games. The show will host over 1,000 contestants vying for a $5 million prize — which Amazon says is the largest single payout in TV history.
Donaldson will host the game show, which will air in 240 countries and territories. He took to X to announce the news on Monday, writing, “I’ll reveal more later this year but let’s just say, it’s gonna be an insane show.”
“My goal is to make the greatest show possible and prove YouTubers and creators can succeed on other platforms,” MrBeast said in a press statement. “Amazon gave me the creative control I need to try and make it happen. I hope to make the YouTube community proud.”
The show, Donaldson explained in an interview with creators Colin and Samir, “will look nothing like a normal game show.” The finer details, including the format of the game show, are not clear yet.
“When MrBeast first told us about his concept for the show, we were blown away by his ambition to make Beast Games the biggest reality competition series ever,” Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon MGM Studios, said in a press statment. Sanders also praised the team behind Los Angeles-based creator economy startup Spotter, including founder and CEO Aaron DeBevoise and COO Nic Paul, “for the introduction and kickstarting this journey for us.” MrBeast has signed multiple deals with Spotter since 2020.
With 245 million subscribers, Donaldson’s YouTube channel, under the name MrBeast, is the most subscribed individual on the platform and second-most subscribed channel overall. His larger-than-life content includes many a stunt and giveaway, including a controversial recreation of Netflix’s Squid Game, in which contestants around the world competed in the show’s various challenges for a cash prize. This kind of audience is the stuff of Prime Video’s dreams — especially when 10,000 people will show up in person just to buy a MrBeast Burger. MrBeast himself rakes in the cash, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars with each video on his social platforms, and making $600 million to $700 million per year — and recently testing extra revenue on X. It hasn’t been revealed just how much Amazon is paying MrBeast for the upcoming series, but we’re going to guess it’s a lot.
