Now that we're more or less at the halfway point in the year, we feel confident in saying that the Fyre Festival fiasco is officially our second Favourite Celebrity Story of 2017.
The first is clearly Kendall Jenner's Pepsi advert, but Fyre Festival is a close second. It has it all - a rapper who was reasonably popular in the late '90s, a tech-bro billionaire, rich Instagram kids in chaos, hot and spicy memes, and enough schadenfreude and pettiness to light up a city.
As if the humiliation of being a trending topic on Twitter for two or three days wasn't enough, there's fresh trouble for Ja Rule and the organisers. A class-action lawsuit totalling $100 million has been filed against Ja Rule and Billy MacFarland, the central organisers of Fyre Festival. The lawsuit, filed by celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, claims "fraud, breach of contract, breach of covenant of good faith and negligent misrepresentation," and is seeking no less than $100 million in damages.
What's more, TMZ reports that Ja Rule and Billy MacFarland are now banned from doing business in the Bahamas by the Ministry of Tourism. In fact, Fyre Festival was such a disaster for the Bahamas that they've now promised to enforce "stricter vetting system for future festivals, and it will check in with organizers multiple times during the planning process."
Seth Rogen and The Lonely Island's film better cover all this, because this is comedy gold.
Via Variety / TMZ
