Niamh Shackleton
MrBeast and Amazon are facing a series of allegations of mistreatment from a handful of Beast Games contestants.
Earlier this year MrBeast announced that he was teaming up with Amazon for what they described as 'the largest gameshow ever'.
Amazon MGM Studios outbid other streaming platforms to land the rights to the show, which will see one lucky contestant win a whopping $5 million.
The winner has to beast the other 999 contestants to take home the cash, however.
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"My goal is to make the greatest show possible and prove YouTubers and creators can succeed on other platforms," MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, said when the news was announced.
"Amazon gave me the creative control I need to try and make it happen. I hope to make the YouTube community proud."
The show - which is rumored to have a huge $100 million budget - is expected to wrap mid-September, Rolling Stone reports, and is likely to be released before the end of the year.
A recently-filed lawsuit might delay this, however.
In the class-action suit that was filed Monday (September 16) in Los Angeles Superior Court, five unnamed participants have alleged that they were subjected to 'chronic mistreatment' while filming the gameshow.
The complaint calls for Amazon and MrBeast’s company pay alleged unpaid wages and expenses and that the defendants be ordered to pay unspecified punitive monetary damages.
In addition to unpaid wages, Amazon and MrBeast’s production company and independent production firm, Off One’s Base LLC, reportedly failed to do a number of other things including preventing sexual harassment from happening and did not provide participants uninterrupted meal breaks or rest breaks.
Attorneys for the anonymous Beast Games contestants said in a statement about the lawsuit, as per Variety: "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."
The lawsuit further alleges that participants were deprived of medical care, food, sleep and the necessities of basic hygiene.
One unnamed contestant says in the complaint that they were treated as 'less than nothing' while filming.
"I expected to be challenged, but I didn’t think I would be treated like nothing — less than nothing," they said.
UNILAD have approached Amazon and MrBeast for comment.