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Jimmy Donaldson, also referred to as MrBeast on the web, on Monday introduced a brand new actuality competitors present in collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios, aiming to additional blur the traces between YouTube and conventional tv.
The brand new collection, “Beast Video games,” is billed as “the most important actuality competitors collection ever” and can characteristic 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million money prize.
Donaldson is the most-followed particular person creator on YouTube, with greater than 389 million subscribers throughout all of his channels, and is the fourth most-followed creator on TikTok. His large-scale productions on YouTube examine to these of an expert TV operation, with an in depth crew, extremely developed units and large money prizes. Donaldson’s previous movies vary from trapping himself in solitary confinement for seven days, trying to destroy a Lamborghini with a prepare and working his personal model of Squid Sport.
Donaldson mentioned in an interview on the podcast “The Colin and Samir Present” that his movies on YouTube can price between $4 million and $5 million per video, and the brand new present may have a fair larger finances. Information outlet Puck estimated the deal between Donaldson and Amazon to be about $100 million.
“It is like our regular movies, however simply 20 occasions higher,” Donaldson mentioned on the podcast. “Cash’s not a constraint on the present. And so I may also simply do something, which is like much more liberating than you’d suppose and so mind-blowing.”
Donaldson mentioned that working with a streaming service permits him to interrupt freed from the algorithms and values that carry out higher on YouTube like thumbnails, video size and title. Nonetheless, MrBeast movies can web between 300 million and 500 million views every, and there are solely 80 million lively Amazon Prime Video households within the U.S., per Amazon.
“Beast Video games” will not be the primary time a creator has made content material for a streaming service, and the information is a part of a pattern of creators increasing their content material past social media platforms to be able to diversify income. YouTube group “Sidemen” launched a Netflix documentary earlier this 12 months, as an illustration, and the household of TikToker Charli D’Amelio simply aired the third season of their actuality present on Hulu.
“We’re reinventing every little thing,” Donaldson mentioned on the podcast. “This can in all probability be six plus hours of content material, the place my regular movies are 20 minutes lengthy. The character constructing, the storytelling, will probably be out of this world in comparison with our regular movies.”
