Pop Culture

Hulu Drops Fyre Festival Documentary Just Days Before Netflix’s Own Release

Hulu's new film features interviews with 25-year-old festival creator Billy McFarland about the events that led him to a six-year jail sentence.

Fyre Fest Hulu doc
Image via Hulu
Publicist

Hulu channeled their inner Beyoncé as the streaming service dropped their Fyre Fraud documentary on Monday (Jan. 14) out of the blue. Detailing the now-infamous Fyre Festival, the 96-minute long film features interviews with 28-year-old festival creator Billy McFarland about the events that led him to a six-year jail sentence for wire fraud, plus talks with festival-goers and artists who were slated to perform.

Hulu's Fyre Fraud can be seen as a chess move in the streaming wars, closely following Netflix's latest trailer for its own doc, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, premiering this Friday, Jan. 18.

In a statement, Emmy-nominated Fyre Fraud directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason describe their work, created and distributed in partnership with Cinemart, Billboard, and Mic, as a "cautionary tale for a generation."

"Billy McFarland offers us a window into the mind of a con artist, the insidious charm of the fraudster and how they can capture our imaginations, our investment, and our votes in the age of Trump," the release reads. "Our aim was to set the stage for a strange journey into the moral abyss of our digital age, going beyond the meme to show an ecosystem of enablers, driven by profit and willing to look the other way, for their own gain."

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