Fyre (film)
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is a 2019 American documentary film about Billy McFarland and the failed Fyre Festival of 2017. It was directed by Chris Smith, and produced by Mick Purzycki and was released on Netflix on January 18, 2019.[1]
Fyre | |
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Directed by | Chris Smith |
Produced by |
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Written by | Chris Smith |
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Distributed by | Netflix |
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Running time | 97 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The film was co-produced by Jerry Media, the social media agency responsible for promoting the Fyre Festival and covering up the fraud, and MATTE Projects, the production company that directed the Fyre Festival's promotional shoot.[2][3][4][5] Jerry Media approached VICE with the idea of a documentary three months after the events.[6] According to Netflix, the documentary was Smith's idea.[7]
Reception
On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 92% approval rating with an average rating of 7.69/10, based on 91 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fyre smolders with agonizing tension when a party in paradise goes awry, but this slickly assembled documentary reserves its greatest horror for damning observations about the dangers of wealth."[8] Metacritic, which uses a normalized average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9]
In reviewing Fyre and Fyre Fraud, a similar documentary that premiered on Hulu, The A.V. Club stated that "Fyre is the stronger, more worthwhile documentary, but its counterpart is a helpful reminder that, like so many stories, one account can't contain the whole truth."[10]
In April 2019, Netflix reported that 20 million households had watched the film during its first month of release.[11]
On the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Fyre earned four nominations, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera), and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera).[12]
References
- "Get ready to binge: Here's what you can expect from Netflix in 2019". The Sacramento Bee. ISSN 0890-5738. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
- "How to Prevent Another Fyre Festival". Bloomberg. 29 January 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
- "8 Takeaways From Hulu's Surprise-Released Fyre Festival Doc". www.vulture.com. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
- Shamsian, Jacob. "The social media company behind Fyre Festival lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers after being accused of plagiarizing its posts". INSIDER. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
- Zimmerman, Amy (2019-01-18). "Netflix's 'Fyre': Inside the Millennial Scam of the Decade". Retrieved 2019-07-30.
- Martin, Brittany (22 January 2019). "Both Fyre Fest Documentaries Have Issues (But, Yeah, We're Obsessed Anyway)". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
- Livingstone, Josephine. "Fyre Festival Was a Huge Scam. Is Netflix's Fyre Documentary a Scam, Too?". New Republic. Retrieved 2019-02-12.
- "Fyre (2019)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- "Fyre reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
- McLevy, Alex. "Who has the better Fyre Festival documentary, Netflix or Hulu?". AV Club. Retrieved 2019-01-28.
- Porter, Rick (April 16, 2019). "'Umbrella Academy' Draws 45M Global Viewers, Netflix Claims". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
- Netflix's Fyre Festival doc beats out Hulu's version for best documentary Emmy nomination