Amid the ongoing legal fallout from Fyre Festival’s doomed 2017 event, and subsequent documentaries by Netflix and Hulu, the streaming platforms could be facing subpoenas from the trustee overseeing the festival’s bankruptcy.

According to a report by Bloomberg, federal trustee Gregory Messer is looking to find out more about how Netflix and Hulu obtained ‘insider’ footage for their documentaries, and how much Fyre’s founder Billy McFarland was paid for an interview broadcast in Hulu’s.

It has also been reported that Messer wants to issue subpoenas to ticket resale site Stubhub over a $464,283 transfer, a $453,423 payment to reseller Vivid Seats, and a $275,000 transfer at the end of 2016 to McFarland’s mother, Irene.


The subpoenas issued to Netflix and Hulu are still pending. They follow an earlier round of demands by Messer which together represent $13.5 million in wire transfers. This is slightly over half of the $26 million he is trying to recover for Fyre Festival’s creditors.

“In order to create the documentaries, both Hulu and Netflix used unique behind-the-scenes footage of the festival,” Messer said in the filing obtained by Bloomberg.

“Due to a lack of information, it is impossible for the Trustee to determine where the footage came from and whether such footage was an asset of the Debtor’s estate.”

In January Ja Rule, who was one of Fyre Festival’s founders, tweeted his belief that there were ethical issues surrounding the documentaries.

“Hulu PAID BILLY!!! That money should’ve [gone] to the Bahamian ppl Netflix PAID fuck Jerry the same guys that did the promo for the festival… The docs clearly have Billy at fault but let’s blame the rapper lmao ok…,” he said.