MrBeast has revealed that they built a $15 million ‘city’ for the contestants of the controversial new Amazon game show.
The YouTuber shared the news on an episode of Impaulsive, a podcast by Logan Paul, when he sat down to chat to Paul and KSI.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, talked about shooting his new show Beast Games that’s due to be released on Amazon.
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During the podcast, Donaldson claimed that the show would make his YouTube videos look like ‘child’s play’.
He said: “We built a city in the middle of nowhere. There's just a field and we pulled up, we built like an actual city, in like buildings, like an actual walled in city that the contestants lived in throughout the show.”
Donaldson shared that the new city cost a whopping $15 million to bring to life, with enough towers to house hundreds of people.
He continued: “The first episode I spent over $20 million, I mean it was probably like one of the most expensive episodes in television history.”
The show is set to have around 1,000 contestants who will go head to head for a $5 million cash prize, which is said to be the largest single prize in TV and streaming history.
However, the show has been plagued with controversy ahead of its release and MrBeast and Amazon have now been sued by contestants.
A lawsuit seen by Variety detailed ‘multiple’ contestants on Beast Games being hospitalized.
The suit states: “Indeed, according to local news reports, multiple (countless) Beast Games Contestants were taken to the hospital, including for dehydration.
“Scott Roeben of Vital Vegas reported that local Desert Springs Hospital ‘had seen countless patients coming from Beast Games due to lack of food and water’; and that the production had allegedly ‘denied food to diabetics, denied water to contestants, and at least two had seizures as a result’.”
Variety stated that the lawsuit, made by five contestants as a class action suit, also claims that the production: “Failed to pay minimum wages and overtime; failed to prevent sexual harassment; created conditions that subjected contestants to ‘infliction of emotional distress’; did not provide participants uninterrupted meal breaks or rest breaks; and exposed contestants to ‘dangerous circumstances and conditions as a condition of their employment.’”
Attorneys for the Beast Games contestants released a statement, saying:
“While participants knew upon signing the contract at the production’s inception that they were facing a potentially long and challenging competition, they allege getting a lot more than they bargained for.
“Several contestants ending up hospitalized, while others reported suffering physical and mental complications while being subjected to chronic mistreatment, degradation and, for the female contestants, hostile working conditions.”
LADbible Group has previously contacted Mr Beast and Amazon for a comment.