Jimmy Donaldson — higher identified on the Web as Mr. Beast, the content material creator who’s turn out to be well-known for wild and costly stunts — has at all times needed to take what he does on YouTube and make it even larger. This yr, he put that dream into movement with Beast Video games, the Prime Video competitors collection that gathered 1,000 contestants for an opportunity to win a money prize within the thousands and thousands. “With YouTube, it’s tougher to inform a narrative, and to have arcs, inside one single 30-minute video,” Donaldson mentioned throughout a current THR Presents panel. “We had a want to have higher tales [about the contestants] and to have even larger money prizes.”
Donaldson and his govt producer Sean Klitzner assembled a crack group of creatives to convey their imaginative and prescient to life — beginning with casting director Katy Wallin, who spent 12 weeks speaking to over 100,000 individuals in her seek for contestants. I’ve by no means labored this tough in my life, however my son is a big fan and he’s the explanation I’m doing this,” she mentioned.
A type of 100,000 individuals was Jeffrey Randall Allen, a father of two from California who signed up for the competitors collection hoping to boost consciousness about his son Lucas, who struggles with a uncommon illness referred to as Creatine Transporter Deficiency. “Clearly I’m in, like, the highest 10 p.c oldest [contestants], so after I acquired there I used to be like, what am I doing right here?” laughs Allen, who was identified all through the present as Participant 831. “However all the pieces stood nonetheless through the video games, it didn’t matter when you 20 or 60, we have been all on equal footing. There was no know-how, no idea of time, we have been all in it collectively.”
That’s, in fact, till the top. After the preliminary $5 million prize haul doubled through the collection, Allen went on to win a whopping $10 million. “I really feel blessed to have this platform to speak about my son’s situation, and profitable was the cherry on prime,” he says. “I acquired to speak about my son to the world, after which I simply so occurred to win $10 million, which permits me to do a variety of good not just for my household however for different youngsters.”
Watch the video above for the remainder of the dialog concerning the making of the competitors. This version of THR Presents is sponsored by Prime Video.