Directors Of Competing Hulu And Netflix Fyre Festival Docs Are Beefing And Taking Shots At Each Other Following Surprise Release Of ‘Fyre Fraud’

There are two Fyre festival documentaries being released on competing platforms this week and the filmmakers of both movies are taking shots at each other through the media.

Last week, Netflix dropped the trailer for their new documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened which was set to deliver a behind the scenes look at the shit show that was the Fyre festival and how 25-year-old fraudster Billy McFarland scammed thousands of millenials out of millions of dollars.

Before Netflix was able to release their movie, Hulu quickly swooped in and surprisingly released their own Fyre festival documentary ‘Fyre Fraud’ on Monday.

https://twitter.com/carolineframke/status/1084847947576168449

In Hulu’s Fyre festival doc ‘Fyre Fraud’ they reveal that Jerry Media/ Fuck Jerry, the marketing/ social media company that worked closely to promote Fyre Festival in 2017, was producing the Netflix doc.

https://twitter.com/tanyamel/status/1085029492144435200

Via The Ringer

“I feel like there’s a bigger ethically compromised position, and that’s going and partnering with folks who marketed the Fyre Festival and were well aware that this was not going to happen as planned,” says Furst. “That folks were not going to get villas, that folks were not even going to get bathrooms. We have emails that prove that people knew months in advance what was going on and we have a whistle-blower from inside that social media company [Jerry] who says that he knew months before that this wasn’t going to be what it was sold as.”

Not only did the director of Netflix Fyre festival doc Chris Smith fire back by claiming that there was no conflict of interest by working with Jerry Media but he also accused the Hulu filmmakers of paying Billy McFarland $250k to be in their doc.

Via The Ringer

We were happy to work with Jerry Media and a number of others on the film. At no time did they, or any others we worked with, request favorable coverage in our film, which would be against our ethics. We stand behind our film, believe it is an unbiased and illuminating look at what happened, and look forward to sharing it with audiences around the world.

We were aware of [the Hulu production] because we were supposed to film Billy McFarland for an interview,” says Smith. “He told us that they were offering $250,000 for an interview. He asked us if we would pay him $125,000. And after spending time with so many people who had such a negative impact on their lives from their experience on Fyre, it felt particularly wrong to us for him to be benefiting. It was a difficult decision but we had to walk away for that reason. So then he came back and asked if we would do it for $100,000 in cash. And we still said this wasn’t something that was going to work for us.”

Hulu’s Fyre Fraud director Jenner Furst disputes Smith’s claim that they paid McFarland $250k to be in the film.

“I can’t tell you the amount,” he said, “but what I can tell you is that if you printed [$250,000], that would be a lie. That was not the amount. It was less than that. I don’t know why Chris [Smith] is quoting him that way. We both made a film about the same person. We know the person is a compulsive liar.”

This might be the pettiest documentary beef in the history of cinema and I’m here for it.