Like just about everything MrBeast does, his show on Prime Video, Beast Games, was big. The Squid Game-like show in which 1,000 contestants competed for $10 million became Amazon's most watched unscripted series ever, with 50 million viewers in the month it began streaming.
That $10 million cash prize was the biggest in game show history, too. It was originally $5 million, but during the series, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) doubled it with a coin flip.
That's just one of the reasons MrBeast says that despite a $100 million budget provided by Amazon, he still paid «tens of millions» out of his own pocket. «It was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games,» MrBeast said in an interview with The Diary of a CEO on YouTube. «I lost money.
I would have more money if I didn't film it.» In the interview (via GamesRadar) MrBeast explained that the cost for just a single episode of the 10-episode series could exceed $15 million.
Episode 1, according to MrBeast, featured «arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history» and the city set in Episode 2 cost $14 million alone to build.