In November 2021, the third Astroworld music festival commenced in Houston, Tex., the hometown of rap superstar Travis Scott. Scott had a personal affinity for the Six Flags AstroWorld theme park in Houston that had closed its doors in 2005, naming his six-time platinum certified 2018 album after it and holding the inaugural festival near the site of the demolished amusement park. After canceling the 2020 edition because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Astroworld 2021 promised to be bigger than the two editions before, expanding the festival from one day to two, while uniting tens of thousands of young fans who had missed out on valuable concert-going experiences since the pandemic began.
“It’s a carefree world” is how concertgoer Kaia Redus describes the festival in Netflix’s Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, which details how the Houston celebration turned into a death trap with 10 fatalities, with the youngest victim only nine years old, as well as hundreds of injuries.
“It was a concert you didn’t want to miss, and you knew it was going to be fun,” explains Sophia Santana, another survivor, with enthusiasm and certainty. The feature-length documentary, releasing June 10, is the first in a weekly series that digs into big event meltdowns that made headlines, created corporate scandals, and often cost lives. Directed by Yemi Bamiro, the film includes interviews with survivors and experts and uses footage shot on concertgoers’ phones to explain how such a massive crowd crush happened during Travis Scott’s headlining performance and what happened in the aftermath.
What led to the deaths at Astroworld?
Astroworld was organized by LiveNation, the biggest live event promoter in the U.S. bar none, and the company was eager to capitalize on Scott’s “rager” brand when Astroworld returned. As The Astroworld Tragedy shows, footage of fans breaking down fences to get…
