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Books are doomed, because MrBeast is co-writing a thriller with James Patterson that sounds like Squid Game but worse
The novel, which has a working title of The Most Dangerous Game, is expected to net the pair a $1 million book deal and all of our contempt
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We’re not here to be doom and gloom on the publishing industry; far from it, we adore books and want more of them. That said, the recent announcement that James Patterson, one of the most prolific and best-selling writers in history, is teaming up with breathing YouTube avatar MrBeast to write a thriller novel. What’s more, the novel has already started a bidding war among publishers and is expected to bring in an eight-figure sum.
The book, which is currently titled The Most Dangerous Game (despite the fact there is already a very famous short story by that same title), has a logline that is as unoriginal as the title: “Players fight to survive deadly tests held in dangerous locations around the world, as they battle to become ‘The One’.”
Anyone with Netflix will recognize that as basically the premise of Squid Game. Which makes sense, since MrBeast already ripped off Squid Game once with his Beast Games series on Prime Video. Honestly, we expect this kind of shallow, trend-chasing behavior from MrBeast – he clearly has a weird obsession with forcing people to perform dangerous stunts for his own amusement. James Patterson, though – we expected more from him. While his recent work has felt uninspired at times, he’s still a pillar of the publishing industry, with a track record for pushing out books at a pace that would put anyone but Hideaki Anno to shame. He has eight books with different co-writers out in 2025 alone.
The Most Dangerous Game (or whatever it ends up being called) currently doesn’t have a release date but the collaboration between MrBeast and James Patterson is expected to result in a more than $1 million publishing deal for the pair and that is just the worst sign of the times we can imagine.
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