If anyone could get James Patterson blinged out in chains, sunglasses and stacks of dollar bills, it’s MrBeast. And if anyone could get the YouTuber to pick up the pen, it’s Patterson.
Patterson and MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, are taking a page from the other’s marketing strategies to promote their new book.
Donaldson has buried himself alive in the name of viral challenges. He’s gifted private islands to strangers. He’s thrown his own (non lethal) $456,000 Squid Game. Now, he’s testing out the gameability of the literary world with his debut novel, “The Most Dangerous Games” (out now from William Morrow).
Having bumped elbows with everyone from Justin Timberlake to Miranda Cosgrove, it was only a matter of time before Donaldson
crossed paths with Patterson, another prolific collaborator. Patterson, in recent years, has co-written novels with everyone from the late Dolly Parton to Viola Davis to former President Bill Clinton.
Partnering with Patterson gives the book a multigenerational appeal, Donaldson tells USA TODAY.
“Hopefully it's something that could bring a family together, because when's the last time there's been a book that a mom and her son or daughter would also be interested in and they could read and talk about at the dinner table?” Donaldson, who is a character in the story, says.
“The Most Dangerous Games” brings readers on a globe-trotting adventure with a mind-boggling cash prize. The title bears no relation to the short story by Richard Connell (“Coincidence,” Donaldson tells USA TODAY. “I haven’t even read that book.”), but like the 1924 survival thriller, by the time you realize just how dangerous things are, it’s already too late.
MrBeast is on a mission to gamify reading for his fans
In “The Most Dangerous Games,” 1,000 contestants must compete to determine who is best suited to save the world from disaster. Strength, teamwork and wit will be put to the test as competitors dodge orcas in Antarctica and swim with sharks in Chile. They'll get a billion dollars, too. Saving the world is expensive.
Despite warning participants in a letter that they “could die,” MrBeast (the character) later realizes that his superiors designed the game to be more dangerous than he thought.
The novel has the dizzying, high-octane feel of a MrBeast video. It’s purposeful, Donaldson tells USA TODAY. He grew up thinking books were “boring.” It wasn’t until he read “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson and “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt that he realized he was just “exposed to the wrong ones."
Donaldson likens his book to "The Odyssey," jumping from place to place and adventure to adventure to keep readers turning the page.
“I'm very excited because I think this could be the first book for millions of young people that they actually enjoy,” Donaldson says.
If that doesn’t incite his fanbase of over 515 million subscribers, he’s also adding a Beast-ian challenge: One reader who buys the book and enters the contest on themostdangerousgames.com will win $1 million. Readers can play along with a series of weekly elimination challenges involving clues from the book, eventually advancing to a final showdown with the Top 10 players.
A YouTuber and a bestselling writer walk into a bar
The collaboration itself came about organically. Donaldson, who says he loves “learning from people,” invited Patterson to hang out at his studio. He enjoyed spending time with him so much that the two sparked a friendship and decided to write a book.
“Sometimes I'd feel really bad giving feedback. I'm like, ‘Man, he knows so much better than me’ and it felt kind of weird. It's like the equivalent of if he was giving me feedback on a YouTube video,” Donaldson says.
One particular challenge was writing himself into the story. The YouTuber appears as a fictionalized version of himself, first as an investor and then as a competitor.
“Since we’re collabing together and it’s about games, which is kind of my whole thing, it wasn’t a hard decision,” Donaldson says, of deciding to fictionalize himself for “The Most Dangerous Games.” What was difficult, however, was giving Patterson feedback on his personality. Donaldson says he asked friends for help so he wouldn’t “talk myself up.”
‘The Most Dangerous Games’ lets MrBeast's imagination go wild
In the book, Donaldson appears as a mentor figure to some of the younger contestants, who grew up watching him on YouTube.
The contestants are awestruck: “Wyatt feels the mood shift the second Jimmy steps up. It’s ridiculous, but it’s real. People straighten. People look. Like they’re watching someone who’s supposed to know what comes next. ‘Pretty sure I’ve watched every video he’s ever made,’ he says to Hannah and Alek.”
In these IP-driven times, I ask him if he’s thought about a movie adaptation. He’s game (“Hey, Hollywood, hit me up. You know how to reach me,” he says. “Of course, that’d be freaking awesome.”) but isn’t sure whether he’d play himself. A cameo, maybe.
“I have a lot of lines in the book,” Donaldson says. “If we were lucky enough to do a movie, I wouldn't want to ruin it because I don't have much acting skills.”
Even if he is willing to blur the lines by casting himself in this novel, Donaldson insists there's no connection to his real-life Beast Games, the successful Amazon MGM show that has faced controversy of its own. In September 2024, following a New York Times investigation, five unnamed participants filed a lawsuit against Beast Games, alleging “chronic mistreatment.” The lawsuit is ongoing.
“Well, this is a fiction book called ‘The Most Dangerous Games’ that doesn’t happen in reality, so I wouldn’t really compare the two,” Donaldson says. “I’d say they’re completely different things.”
But there are advantages to staging a game show on a fictional stage, where there are no islands to terraform, he says.
“There's a lot of things in here that we would never be able to do in real life, and that's the beauty of a fiction book,” Donaldson says. "I think part of what will make people who like my videos really enjoy it is because it's so different. It has a similar feeling, but it's also so much more different because it's unrestrained.”
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find heron Instagram, subscribe to our weeklyBooks newsletter or tell her what you’re reading atcmulroy@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MrBeast, the world's most popular YouTuber, just did something totally unexpected
