For a brief, shining moment in 2017, the world came together to witness a beautiful mess unfold. Fyre Festival — a so-called “luxury” music festival in the Bahamas — was revealed to have been nothing more than a scam, after attendees paid up to $250,000 to attend. They arrived to find disaster-relief tents and cold cheese sandwiches instead of glamping accommodations and high-end catering; there were no musical guests or supermodels on the premises. Billy McFarland, the millennial entrepreneur who founded the festival with rapper Ja Rule, was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud.
Now, interested parties will have the opportunity to learn the in-depth story behind the Fyre Festival meltdown. Twice, actually — because mere days before Netflix is set to release the documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Hulu dropped their own, titled Fyre Fraud.
Here’s the trailer for Fyre Fraud (again, Hulu). It’s described as “a true-crime comedy exploring a failed music festival turned internet meme at the nexus of social media influence, late-stage capitalism, and morality in the post-truth era.”
And Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (Netflix), which bills itself more succinctly as “an exclusive behind the scenes look at the infamous unraveling of the Fyre music festival.” It’ll be out on January 18.
Also, here’s the picture of that dreadful cheese sandwich once again, because looking at it brings me intense peace and joy:
And, as always, RIP Fyre Festival, 2017–2017.
