Before you ask: No, the influencer does not want people to kill each other for entertainment ...yet.
If you make a living out of turning outrageous ideas into reality, then replicating a televised gladiator battle between children may seem like just another day at work. And for YouTube's most successful influencer – millionaire James Donaldson a.k.a. MrBeast – it may be the next step.
Who is MrBeast?
For Donaldson, it wouldn't be the first time hosting various contestants going head-to-head in what are essentially standalone episodes of reality TV. Most recently, for example, he struck a streaming deal with Amazon Prime Video to create a satirical knock-off of Netflix's extremely successful Squid Game series.
After getting his start on YouTube with Let's Play videos, he attained his first standout successes by spending sponsorship investments on increasingly grand and extravagant concepts, mostly relating to giving out notable amounts of money. Later, these videos adopted more philanthropic tones.
After minor controversies before, the now-millionaire has experienced several public image setbacks since 2024, relating to the working conditions of his staff and the quality of other products of which he had become the face of as part of other business ventures.
Why the Hunger Games?
In a recent interview, MrBeast confirmed that he was planning on hosting a battle royale between 26 contestants in the style of the Hunger Games.
He's referring to the gladiator-style battles to the death depicted in Suzanne Collins' series of young adult dystopian novels called The Hunger Games, which were later adapted into a prominent movie franchise. In the story, a dictatorial regime has instituted a tradition where defeated rebel territorries have to send two of their children to an arena each year, where the representatives of each territorry then fight to the death. The participants mostly have to survive on their own, with only sponsors being allowed to send them tools or food. They have an interest in doing so because these so-called Hunger Games are heavily televised and celebrated in-universe, which Collins intended as criticism of the commercialization of suffering on display in contemporary reality TV.
The YouTuber seeks to combine this premise with his usual mode of operation, meaning that the contestants in his version of the event would also be on their own, but instead of having to kill each other for a chance to survive, they'd be competing for a one-million USD prize pool.
In his words:
I’ve been sitting on this idea where it’d be fun to grab potentially 26 random people, put them on an island, and – not use real weapons, maybe like laser tag or something – and then the last remaining one wins a million a dollars to recreate Hunger Games in real life.
But what do you think? Would you be interested in tuning in? Or would you say it's too tasteless? Let us know in the comments below!