It was a festival fiasco that stunned the world. A modern version of "Lord of the Flies", with Instagram influencers instead of school kids.
However, the return of the notorious Fyre festival is still on the cards, its organizer has announced, but it is still uncertain when and where it will take place - nor is it known who will perform.
Plans to restart the ill-fated festival were announced last summer, but there were fears that history could repeat itself as there was no new information, the Guardian reports. However, one of the founders of the festival, Billy McFarland, insists that the Fyre Festival will indeed take place. Tickets are already on sale, with prices starting at $499 (€448) and going up to $7.999 (€7.194). "Fyre II has to succeed," McFarland told the Wall Street Journal.
While Blink-182 and Migos have been announced for the original festival, the artists and events for Fyre II are still being considered.
"Karate fights on the beach, I think that would be amazing. To have extreme sports, comedy and fashion," McFarland said.
He added that his associates are considering potential locations in Honduras, Belize, Jamaica and Panama.
McFarland said it will be difficult to gain people's trust if his second attempt at organizing the Fyre festival fails. "It's going to be very difficult to get other opportunities, whether it's a job in marketing, a guest appearance on a podcast, a TV show or a relationship with someone," he added.
The original event, which the lawsuit compared to "The Hunger Games" and "Lord of the Flies," was organized by McFarland along with rapper Ja Rule and was supposed to take place in the Bahamas in 2017.
The festival caused losses of more than 26 million dollars when it was canceled due to inadequate accommodation, food and water. Ja Rule was acquitted of the Fyre Festival fiasco in 2019, a year after McFarland ended up in prison.
As shown in the Netflix documentary "Fyre: The Biggest Party That Never Happened," organizers used influencers like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid to promote the luxury event.
The festival was to be held on a remote private island that was claimed to have once belonged to drug lord Pablo Escobar. There is no evidence that Jenner or Hadid knew about the state of the festival.
Guests were promised Instagram-perfect experiences, lavish accommodations and luxury food, with tickets costing up to $12.780. However, upon arrival, they found the camp drenched in rain and emergency tents.
Their luggage was dumped in the dark parking lot, and the food, which was supposed to be gourmet, consisted only of cheese sandwiches in plastic containers. There was no running water or electricity, and acts like Blink-182 canceled their shows.
McFarland was jailed in 2018 after pleading guilty to numerous fraud charges related to the festival and his company NYC VIP Access, which sold fake tickets to events like the Met Gala. Vanity Fair described him as "the poster boy for millennial scams".
A group of 277 Fyre festival goers were awarded $2021 per person in 7.220.
After his release last year, McFarland began planning a second attempt at the Fyre Festival, which he says he conceived while in solitary confinement. "This is everything I've been working on. Let's go!" he told his followers on social media.
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