MrBeast’s reality series “Beast Games” has been compared to Fyre Festival with “deplorable conditions” according to crew members.
Revealed in early 2024, MrBeast is creating a reality TV series called ‘Beast Games’ that will premiere on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.
Roughly 2,000 contestants are competing for a $5,000,000 prize, and the first half of the contestants were reportedly eliminated in a series of events in Las Vegas according to Rolling Stone.
The publication spoke to a production crew member who revealed that the filming is expected to finish sometime in mid-September. Beast Games’ proper release, however, is still unknown as of writing.
Rolling Stone also obtained internal documents, NDAs, and set photos from when the show was being filmed in Toronto. In them, crew members reportedly described a potentially unsafe working environment that was “disorganized” and “wild.”
One crew member reportedly compared the production to Fyre Fest and said that staff were inexperienced.
“It’s a Fyre Fest kind of feeling,” the staffer said. “There’s a reason why this level of production hasn’t been attempted before, and it certainly should never have been attempted without people who know what they are doing.”
For the uninitiated, Fyre Festival was a music event created by rapper Ja Rule alongside Billy McFarland back in 2017. Tons of hype went into it and was advertised by the likes of Kendall Jenner, Hailey Beiber, and more. However, it ended up lacking the infrastructure needed to provide a safe and quality event and McFarland was later sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding investors and ticket holders.
One of the contestants, Scott Leopold, wanted to take part in the TV show because it “would be good for my acting” but tried to justify what he described as “deplorable conditions.”
“They were in over their heads and they didn’t know what to do,” he added. “Like people were just doing things that they couldn’t control.”
MrBeast has been under fire over the last few months after former employee Ava Kris Tyson faced allegations of grooming a minor while working with the YouTube star back in July. Since then, there have been claims that he illegally fired an employee and stole a video idea from another YouTube.
An internal email leaked on August 9, 2024, showing that MrBeast has promised a “full investigation” into the allegations and internal changes to his YouTube production company.
This backlash hasn’t stopped him from growing his other companies, though. MrBeast revealed a partnership with Logan Paul and KSI, and their respective companies Feastables and Prime, to create Lunchly – a Lunchables competitor that features both products.