Beast Games set for ‘couple more seasons’ on Prime Video reveals Amazon’s Hopkins

MrBeast described himself as ‘an idiot’ for how much he spent on Beast Games

Amazon’s head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, Mike Hopkins, has indicated the streamer will make further seasons of Beast Games, the mega-budget reality competition series from the world’s biggest YouTuber, MrBeast.

During an industry leaders panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference in LA on Wednesday, Hopkins said Amazon was “going to do a couple more seasons of that, I think, soon.”

Season one of Beast Games is the most expensive season of unscripted television ever made, with 1,000 contestants taking part and more than US$25m in prize money given out in the end (initially, the prize money was billed as US$5m).

The first season was produced after Amazon signed a US$100m deal with MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson). However, according to Donaldson, the project went way over budget.

“We spent way too much money on it. I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show. I’m an idiot,” he told Diary of a CEO earlier this year. “It was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games. I would have more money if I didn’t film it.”

However, according to Amazon, the show became a hit for Prime Video, drawing more than 50 million viewers (Amazon does not specify how it counts a “viewer”) in the first 25 days after its premiere, making it the most-watched unscripted series in the streaming service’s history.

The Wall Street Journal later reported that Donaldson was asking for more than US$150m per season to make S2 and 3.