Taika Waititi is developing a musical based on the infamous Fyre Festival – find out more below.
- READ MORE: The 10 most WTF moments from Netflix’s jaw-dropping Fyre Festival documentary
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Waititi and fellow filmmaker Bryan Buckley are co-developing the stage adaptation, dubbed Fyre Fest The Musical. Buckley will direct and write the book for the musical, while Waititi produces.
The stage show has yet to receive a premiere date, nor has details of its production timelines been revealed. The Hollywood Reporter has also noted that the stage adaptation has yet to be locked in for Broadway. Waititi’s partner and musician Rita Ora is also slated to produce.
A logline of the stage show, via The Hollywood Reporter, reads: “Not just a Greek-sized tragedy of one man’s con. It’s a satirical indictment of an entire generation. Fyre Fest The Musical. It’s about as wrong as a bad idea can go.”
The musical will also marks Waititi’s return to theater for the first time in 15 years. He said in a statement: “I haven’t done it for 15 years because it was no longer fun, but I’ve been told it will be fun this time. And I believe them… Honestly, I think the idea is exciting, weird, and potentially disastrous, which seems apt and is how I like to work. I can’t wait to get started and snatch me some of that sweet American theatre money.”
Buckley added: “I never saw something completely mind-bendingly ridiculous and intriguing as what went down with Fyre Festival. A spectacular failed endeavor — that will haunt a generation forever. I cannot wait to get this show out to the world. And yeah man, this time there will actually be music or your money back.”
The original Fyre Festival was first developed by McFarland eight years ago, and was planned to run over two weekends on a private beach in the Bahamas. That edition in 2017 was reportedly set to include performances from Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Migos, Pusha T, Tyga and more.
It made headlines when it was revealed to be fraudulent, with punters arriving on the scene and facing inadequate conditions and a lack of food and water. The ordeal was then captured in the now-iconic Netflix documentary FYRE.
McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for defrauding investors and was released after just four years in 2022. Fyre Fest 2 was originally set to run between May 30 and June 2 on an island in Mexico, before the tourism board and local officials claimed that no such festival existed.
Before it was cancelled, the second edition of Fyre Fest saw tickets sell for between $1,400 and $25,000 (£1,081-£19,305), while premium packages were priced as high as $1.1million (£850,000). Ahead of the planned second instalment, former Fyre Festival investor Andy King warned of “a lot of red flags” over the event’s planned reboot.
In May, it was revealed that the Fyre Festival brand was looking to launch a hotel experience later this year, marketed as a Caribbean getaway in Honduras in September. In July, McFarland announced that the Fyre Festival brand and all of its IPs had been sold to a bidder on eBay for just under a quarter of a million dollars.
The founder then shared that he’s working on a “tech platform designed to capture and power the value behind every view online,” and told followers that it’s “coming soon”.