MrBeast unionized his crew. The Teamsters want more.

Q: What did Beast Industries actually agree to with IATSE?

On May 11, 2026 , Beast Industries voluntarily recognized IATSE as the bargaining unit for around 500 crew on Beast Games Season 3, per Variety . The deal includes back pay and benefits for pre-production work already completed and explicitly covers "subsequent seasons" of the show, not just this one, Deadline reported.

Beast Industries just unionized 500 crew members on Season 3 of Beast Games. Then the Teamsters showed up and threatened to shut the whole shoot down. The IATSE deal, voluntarily recognized on May 11, was supposed to cool the heat in Greenville, North Carolina. Instead it kicked off the first real labor showdown between YouTube money and Hollywood's full guild stack.

⚡ Key Takeaways

Beast Industries voluntarily recognized IATSE for around 500 Beast Games Season 3 crew on May 11, with back pay and coverage of all subsequent seasons.
The deal came after Season 3 quietly started non-union in Greenville, NC, before organizing pressure flipped it.
Teamsters Locals 391 and 399 now threaten a strike for May 29 to force a fully union shoot across every craft, not just IATSE's.
The fight isn't wages. It's whether YouTube-funded productions get treated as standard Hollywood shoots, with every guild attached.
Beast Industries can absorb it at a $5B valuation. The next tier of YouTube-to-Hollywood crossovers cannot.
Fanvault's bet: 8% fees and Telegram-based automation scale revenue without inheriting Hollywood's labor stack.

What actually happened?

On May 11, Beast Industries voluntarily recognized IATSE for 500 crew on Season 3 of the $10 million Prime Video competition, per Variety. The deal includes back pay and benefits for completed pre-production work. It also covers "subsequent seasons," Deadline reported. Season 2 had been a fully union shoot, but producers started Season 3 with a non-union crew before organizing pressure flipped it, TheWrap confirmed.

The back-pay concession is the part Hollywood is reading hardest. IATSE got pre-production hours covered retroactively, meaning Season 3 is effectively a union show from minute one, even though it didn't start that way. That is the kind of give-up Hollywood unions usually fight for months. Beast Industries gave it up in days, per Hollywood Reporter.

Then the Teamsters showed up. Locals 391 (North Carolina) and Lindsay Dougherty's Local 399 (Hollywood) read the IATSE-only deal as turf encroachment, since they typically cover drivers, location managers, casting directors, and animal handlers on Hollywood productions. By May 28, they were threatening a strike for Friday morning, May 29, that could freeze the Greenville shoot, Deadline reported.

Why does this matter for creators?

The fight isn't about wages. Beast Industries already pays union scale. It's about codifying Season 3 as a fully union production across every craft, not just the IATSE-covered ones. That distinction is the first time YouTube-native production money has been forced to confront the entire Hollywood labor stack at once.

Translation: every creator scaling from a desk-and-camera setup into a real soundstage is now on notice. The price of going Hollywood-scale just got itemized. And it's being set by the people MrBeast hired, not by MrBeast.

It also rewrites the cost model of every "creator goes to Hollywood" headline since 2020. The Paul brothers' streaming ventures, the Kelce brothers' Amazon shows, the Sidemen's content deals, those productions all relied on the labor side staying quiet. Beast Games just proved quiet has a number on it. And the number scales with how loud you are.

"Organizing season three of 'Beast Games' boiled down to IATSE solidarity in this difficult production environment."
Michael F. Miller, Jr., IATSE Vice President and Director, Motion Picture & Television Production Department, via Variety

Where does this go from here?

When Amazon paid roughly $100M for the Beast Games deal in 2024, it imported a YouTube production model into Prime Video. Season 1 hit 50M viewers in 25 days, the platform's most-watched unscripted launch ever. Beast Industries is now valued at $5B after a $200M Bitmine raise, per TIME. With 492M+ YouTube subscribers behind the brand, this is no longer a prank-channel production.

The political read is sharper still. Dougherty's Local 399 is one of the most aggressive locals in Hollywood, and she just picked the most-followed creator on the internet as her test case. If the Teamsters force Season 3 into a fully union shoot, the precedent is set for every Prime Video creator deal that follows. That's a deliberate flex, not an accident.

Expect every Hollywood guild to start pricing in YouTube-funded shoots as fair game: IATSE, Teamsters, DGA, WGA, SAG-AFTRA. The next tier of creators stepping up into seven-figure productions are about to inherit this fight without the cash reserves to absorb it. Beast Industries can write the check. Most of the creator economy cannot.

What does Fanvault think?

Beast Industries can absorb a 500-person crew, union scale, and a Teamsters standoff because it has $5 billion in valuation cushion. Most creators do not, and the unionization fight is what happens when you grow by hiring. Fanvault is built for the opposite shape: an 8% platform fee, a Telegram-based automation layer that lets a creator run an entire storefront from chat, and an authenticated memorabilia marketplace that scales revenue without scaling headcount. You don't need a 500-person crew to run a creator business in the first place.

MrBeast just paid Hollywood's entry fee. The rest of YouTube is about to find out it isn't optional. The only escape hatch is to not need the door at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Beast Industries actually agree to with IATSE?

On May 11, 2026, Beast Industries voluntarily recognized IATSE as the bargaining unit for around 500 crew on Beast Games Season 3, per Variety. The deal includes back pay and benefits for pre-production work already completed and explicitly covers "subsequent seasons" of the show, not just this one, Deadline reported.

Why are the Teamsters threatening a strike if IATSE already has a deal?

Because IATSE doesn't cover every craft on a Hollywood shoot. Teamsters Locals 391 (North Carolina) and 399 (Hollywood, run by Lindsay Dougherty) represent drivers, location managers, casting directors, and animal handlers, none of whom are inside the IATSE deal. They're pushing to codify Season 3 as a fully union production across every department, per Deadline.

How big is Beast Games as a Prime Video property?

Big enough that Hollywood unions consider it the test case. Season 1 hit 50M viewers in its first 25 days, the platform's most-watched unscripted launch ever, per Amazon's press materials. Beast Industries is now valued at $5B after a $200M Bitmine raise, and MrBeast's flagship YouTube channel sits at 492M+ subscribers, per Social Blade.

What does this mean for smaller creators considering scripted or unscripted productions?

The cost floor just got higher. Every craft union now has precedent to demand recognition on YouTube-funded productions, and the bar for "you paid a union once on Season 2, you owe us across Season 3" has been set publicly. Creators building toward seven-figure shoots should budget for full guild coverage by default, not as an upgrade.

How is Fanvault thinking about this differently from the Hollywood model?

Fanvault was built so creators don't need a Hollywood-scale crew to run a Hollywood-scale business. The platform charges 8% per transaction (creators keep 92%), runs a Telegram-based automation layer for storefront management, and includes an authenticated memorabilia marketplace with auctions and buy-it-now drops. The whole stack is built to scale revenue without scaling headcount, which is exactly the inverse of the Beast Games situation.