The biggest content creator on YouTube, MrBeast, announced on Monday that he’s filming a game show for Amazon Prime Video.
On X, 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.”
Deadline previously reported that this deal was in the works, but regardless, the news doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s the natural next step for the 25-year-old internet phenom. He’s already producing YouTube videos that have a budget comparable to that of actual TV shows — so why not go Hollywood?
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.
“It’s going to be the largest game show in history, with the most contestants any game show has ever had, with the largest cash prize in history,” MrBeast said in an interview with YouTubers Colin and Samir. “It’s like our normal videos, but just 20 times better […] I have a bigger budget. Money’s not a constraint.”
It’s hard to imagine that money was a constraint to begin with for MrBeast. Before Netflix turned “Squid Game” into a reality show, MrBeast did the same thing, constructing elaborate sets and awarding $456,000 in prize money. On his channel, which has 245 million subscribers, he regularly gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars to contestants who complete absurd tasks, like living in a grocery store for weeks, or competing in an Olympics-style showdown with one person from (almost) every country.
It’s not always a safe bet to take online creators from the laptop screen to the big screen. Older YouTube sensations have learned this the hard way (I have tried and failed to forget that “Fred: The Movie” and “Annoying Orange: Movie Fruitacular” exist).
But MrBeast isn’t just another YouTuber. MrBeast occupies a bizarre space in which he’s probably one of the most influential people among children in teenagers — his dominance in culture is so large that I think of it as the “MrBeast industrial complex.” Yet most people over the age of 30 probably don’t know who he is. But if all goes well with “Beast Games,” this kid from North Carolina will somehow become even more omnipresent than he already is.