By Mark Gray
5:30pm PDT, Aug 23, 2023
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Don't call it a comeback?
Six years after the infamous "music festival that never was" made headlines, the Fyre Festival is coming back… and it's being helmed by Billy McFarland, the same man who was in charge of Fyre's disastrous first go-round.
In an Aug. 22 chat with TMZ, Billy — who served prison time for fraud for his role in Fyre — said the first 100 tickets to Fyre Festival II have already been scooped up at $500 a pop, and that's before the music lineup or location was even revealed.
Billy believes the notoriety from the 2017 Fyre Festival debacle actually made people interested in his reimagined Fyre Festival II.
So how did Part Deux become a thing? Keep reading to see…
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The second iteration of Fyre is set for Dec. 6, 2024, somewhere in the "Caribbean Sea." That's all that's known.
Plenty is known about the first time a Fyre Festival was attempted: Drinking water was scarce and the "luxury" tents were actually left over FEMA tents from the Hurricane Matthew Relief Fund.
Still, the festival that never happened was infamous. It's believed to be the most talked-about festival in the world with 32 billion impressions on social media.
"We saw that in the past 36 hours convert to sales," Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland told TMZ on Aug. 22. "It is so incredible to make the Fyre dream a reality and really share it with the world."
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After the disaster that was the Fyre Festival part I, multiple documentaries were made. These only added to the curiosity of a reinvented version.
"I kind of feel like I'm the pilot of a single-engine propeller plane right now flying through the storm and everyone wants to watch," Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland told TMZ.
"And whether I crash or land, they want to have a front-row seat as long as they're safe. So as long as I can create that turbulence, then Fyre Festival II will become a cultural moment," he said.
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After the calamity of the first Fyre Festival, it's surprising that Billy McFarland was able to find anyone willing to invest or fund a sequel. Billy, though, honed his inner Wayne Gretzky and basically said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
He explained to TMZ, "I got on Instagram and DM'd a couple founders of the top festivals in the world that do a good job. They pretty much ignored me for the past nine months."
However, Broadway soon came calling, which changed everything. "We actually signed a Broadway musical deal to turn this story of my life and Fyre into a Broadway musical recently, and I think the courage of the company behind that deal sparked some of these festival operators to start responding to me," Billy explained.
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One of the more viral moments that came from the first Fyre Festival was the luxury meal: cheese sandwiches. The question now remains whether or not cheese sandwiches will be served at Fyre II.
The answer: Duh!
"Our partners are not gonna let me do much to the festival," Billy McFarland told TMZ. "However, I am going to be cooking cheese sandwiches at the actual event with [former right-hand man] Andy King, so I think it's as far as they'll let me go, but that is definitely happening."
