‹ Back

Two big Youtuber related stories recently provoked some familiar and interesting thoughts. 📢  Prime Video & Amazon Studios announced a competition show deal with MrBeast, likely the largest such deal ever. At the other end of the spectrum, 12 year old YouTube star Ryan Kaji & Co will be releasing a movie to further the brand/franchise- sans major studio. (Links in comments.)

 

Some musings here, based largely on the Mr Beast deal and his chat about it on the Colin and Samir Samir podcast. 

In no particular order:

 

▶ A lot of talk about ‘creative control’- how he will have absolute control over every element of the show, and zero interference. Brilliant & unprecedented, if true to the extent claimed. 🎨 

 

▶ There are plenty of superlatives here- “the biggest ever”, “things you haven‘t seen before”, “like nothing else”, “crazy”, “a different animal than anything anyone has ever done”. Setting expectations high. ⚡ 

 

▶ References to how things will be done ‘differently’ to other game shows (with some specific examples, which admittedly don’t sound new). 🗣 

 

▶ What is also interesting is how fully “Youtube” this show will be (or not). Clearly one of the big objectives here is to bring in swathes of Mr Beast’s massive following to the platform, but presumably this show also needs to appeal to a large chunk of the existing paying Prime Video subscriber base? 

💣 Those two aesthetics are famously difficult to reconcile. ⚖ 

 

▶ Jimmy Donaldson says- unequivocally (and believably)- that streaming/TV has never been his goal. Youtube was never a launch-pad to something else for him, and he is/will always be all-in on Youtube… “unlike some creators”. 

 

This is a fascinating broader point - is premium TV/streaming still an aspiration for creators/Youtubers? Does a large majority still look for ‘validation’ (from Hollywood or elsewhere, as Lucas Shaw touches upon in his newsletter this week)- this usually means their own show on legacy TV or streaming, or a film. 

 

But I feel it is hard to truly decode this in the wider space, not in small part because creators often seem to choose making the ‘right’ noises, not necessarily the real noises (on either side of the aspiration fence). 

 

Game/challenge shows may not be everyone's cup of energy drink, but I will sure have my eyes peeled on this one. It has much to live up to and hopefully not much to live down! 
 

Who's looking forward to this, and who's rolling heir eyes?