The infamous 2017 Fyre Festival was billed to be the “the cultural experience of the decade” – but the Bahama-based music, arts, and cultural event, organised by a now-arrested “serial fraudster” Billy McFarland and the fallen-from-grace hiphop musician Ja Rule, is known for its Lord of the Flies conditions and the entertaining fall-out that followed.
Netflix has decided to immortalise the event with a juicy new documentary about the insanity and rapid decay of Fyre Festival, tweeting it was “the greatest party that never happened”.
The trailer runs on an “expectation versus reality” grid of what punters should have received versus what they really got. Accompanied by an armageddon-sounding score, the teaser is a collection of first-hand footage from guest’s iPhones and DSLRs. It even features an unassuming dude celebrating with shots that soon him and his friends will be “partying like rock stars”, but that changes in another clip when a vehicle barrels towards a dilapidated campsite and a frightened woman shrieks, “turn this bus right around!”
What makes Fyre Festival so memorable was that ticket-holders spent up to 14,000 US dollars a pop to glamp, rub shoulders with supermodels like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and dance to Migos, Skepta and more. Instead, they got a mostly dropped out line-up, crusty sandwiches, half-built tents, and an island of “feral dogs”. Influencers and organisers received severe backlash for deceiving the public and disparaged attendees sued the organisers. It was a music festival that went down in history.
FYRE is set to drop on Netflix January 19.
View the wild trailer for FYRE below.