Hulu comes out ahead of Netflix's Fyre Fest documentary with the surprise release of its own

By Randall Colburn  |  January 14, 2019 | 7:04pm
Aux Features Travis Scott
Hulu comes out ahead of Netflix's Fyre Fest documentary with the surprise release of its own

We’ve heard plenty over the past few weeks about Fyre, a new Netflix documentary about the exercise in schadenfreude that was 2017's Fyre Festival. Amidst all the trailers and the news that Fyre was directed by acclaimed documentarian Chris Smith (American Movie, Collapse), it’s been easy to forget that Hulu has a Fyre Fest documentary of its own. This one, which we first reported on last April, comes from Billboard, The Cinemart, and Mic, and is said to “expose what went wrong and who is to blame.”

Well, in a bold move befitting the scandalous material, Hulu has come out ahead of Fyre’s Friday release by dropping its own feature-length dig into the festival with no advance notice. Called Fyre Fraud, it serves not only to undercut its competitor, but also to mark another stone thrown in the ongoing streaming wars, which will only heat up in the coming year.

Fyre Fraud’s got another ace up its sleeve in Fyre Festival founder (and convicted criminal) Billy McFarland, who gives an exclusive interview to directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason. It looks like a good one, too, with the filmmakers straight-up asking the hollow-headed grifter what he thinks about being called a “sociopath.”

“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,” reads a Fyre Fraud press release. “McFarland’s staggering ambition metastasized in a petri dish of late-stage capitalism, corporate greed, and predatory branding, all weaponized by our fear of missing out.”

Watch a trailer for Fyre Fraud below.

Based on that statement and its trailer, Hulu’s documentary appears much more concerned with the economic and cultural implications of the festival. Netflix’s, on the other hand, looks like a harrowing dive into the horrors of the event itself. We say keep ‘em coming. This shit is hilarious.

 
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