It’s been almost exactly a year since the “luxury” music festival called Fyre Festival was “fully postponed” (read: canceled forever) after ticket holders found themselves stranded in the Bahamas with nothing but a few tents and some really sad cheese sandwiches. Now, Hulu has picked up a multipart documentary about the whole debacle, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Fyre Festival was launched by Fyre Media, a startup owned by Ja Rule and a 20-something entrepreneur named Billy McFarland. The event was a complete disaster that was poorly managed from the start and advertised primarily by Instagram influencers. Kendall Jenner was reportedly paid $250,000 for one Instagram post about the event, which she deleted as soon as everyone realized it was a scam.
Fyre Fest lives on
The currently untitled docuseries, developed by Mic, Billboard, and Cinemart theaters, reportedly features interviews with employees, local Bahamians, vendors, and festivalgoers, as well as “leaked documents, emails, and recordings.” The series will attempt to explain what happened from the festival’s inception to its cancelation, as well as the ensuing legal fallout.
A few months after the festival was canceled, McFarland was arrested and charged with wire fraud by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which alleged that he had altered stock ownership statements and mislead Fyre Festival investors. Last month, McFarland plead guilty to two counts of wire fraud, and accepted a plea deal that would reduce his sentence from 20 years to eight to 10 years plus a maximum $300,000 fine, Bloomberg reports. His sentencing is set to take place on June 21st.
Fyre Fest’s rapid implosion was met with glee by nearly everyone who hadn’t spent thousands of dollars on a ticket. A vague and overly congratulatory pitch deck called Fyre Fest “the cultural experience of the decade” that was also “hard to put into words.” Influencers who were supposed to attend the event were called Fyre Starters, and they were supposed to be part of the Fyre Tribe. If the event had gone off without a hitch, it probably still would’ve been ludicrous enough to laugh at, but its complete failure was an even more appealing story.
The docuseries is set to premiere on Hulu in 2019.