The Fyre Fest Disaster Is Getting the Netflix Documentary Treatment
Remember the Fyre Festival? The doomed musical event in the Bahamas that, instead of becoming the world’s premier influencer event, turned into a Lord of the Flies–style stranded-on-an-island nightmare that produced history’s most notorious sandwich? If you don’t, fear not; you can relive the chaos and splendor with Fyre, a documentary on the debacle coming to Netflix in January.
To quickly recap: Fyre Festival was the brainchild of now-disgraced cofounder Billy McFarland, who wanted to reinvent the music festival as he had claimed to reinvent Black Card–style membership club with his company Magnises (which means less of a reinvention, unfortunately, than defrauding while claiming to reinvent). Fyre was supposed to be the exclusive alternative to played-out Coachella, in which the most hyped social media and brand influencers combined with wealthy jet-setters would descend on a “private” island in the Bahamas to hear headlining music acts, eat luxurious chef-cooked food, and take a lot of selfies in outrageous accommodations. Solidifying its bona fides was a promotional video with high production values starring models like Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski, and Bella Hadid frolicking in the serene blue waters where Fyre would supposedly take place.
Fast-forward to the actual event, originally scheduled for two weekends in April and May of 2017, when the hoards of attendees arrived on an island still recovering from destruction after a recent hurricane to lodgings that consisted of rain-sodden mattresses in FEMA-style tents. There were no musical performances, half-built facilities, and the saddest sandwich the Internet had ever seen. There were reports from influencers present that they could not leave the apocalyptic scene for several hours and that McFarland was nowhere to be found as the island descended into Cast Away. His partner, the rapper Ja Rule, tweeted that he was sorry, but also that it was not his fault.
In March of this year, McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. But Fyre seems to have been an omen of more grifting to come, as the influencer ecosystem on Instagram and in branded content continues to blur the boundaries between real life and fiction; the New York Post reported that McFarland may have even been grifted himself by Anna Sorokin (aka Anna Delvey), a young woman who also conned her way into the world of some of New York’s wealthy. Now it seems that Netflix will give us a look behind the scenes at the nightmare with Fyre, premiering on Netflix on January 18.
