Topline
The final installment of Netflix’s hit documentary anthology “Trainwreck” will revisit the “Storm Area 51” fiasco of 2019, when a Facebook event encouraging millions to converge on a highly classified U.S. Air Force base drew a federal response that included threats from the military and temporary flight restrictions.
"Trainwreck: Storm Area 51."
Netflix will release "Trainwreck: Storm Area 51" on Tuesday as the eighth and final installment in a series of films about bizarre real-life events that once dominated mainstream media.
The series has been a boon for the streamer in the dog days of summer—when TV use traditionally declines—and at least one “Trainwreck” documentary has been among Netflix’s 10 most-watched movies every week since the first debuted on June 10.
Streaming data for six of the releases shows that each spent at least one week on the Netflix most-watched list with two documentaries on the Astroworld tragedy and the so-called “poop cruise,” making the list for two weeks each.
"Trainwreck: Poop Cruise," about a 2013 cruise where passengers were stranded for days without working toilets, was by far the most popular episode so far with 28.2 million views in its first two weeks.
“Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy,” was viewed 13.5 million times in its two weeks on the Top 10 list.
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“Trainwreck: Storm Area 51," the description for which claims to be “the story of the greatest sh*tpost ever made,” will be released Tuesday.
Organizer Matty Roberts, who was 20 at the time, created a Facebook event inviting people to storm the heavily secured Air Force facility called Area 51 in the Nevada desert. The name of the event was: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" and the idea was to gather enough people to charge at the base so some attendees would be able to bypass security. Once inside the facility, Roberts said the potential alien technology and government research lurking inside would be exposed to the public. "Let's see them aliens,” the event's description said.
More than 3.5 million people registered as either “going” or “interested” in the event.
An Air Force spokesperson said the military branch strongly discouraged anyone from attempting to infiltrate Area 51, telling potential attendees the U.S. Air Force “always stands ready to protect America and its assets.” The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily closed the airspace near Area 51, including to news helicopters and emergency medical flights, and an outdoor music festival planned for near the site was moved to Las Vegas.
In the end, about 40 people showed up at the gates before they were confronted and sent away by law enforcement.
Area 51 is a relatively small Air Force base located on 38,000 restricted acres—part of a larger, 2.9-million acre complex—near Groom Lake in southern Nevada. Details of operations at Area 51 aren't public, other than its description as an open training range. Its only confirmed use is as a flight testing facility and, during World War II, as an aerial gunnery range for the U.S. Army Air Corps. The mystery surrounding the base has sparked dozens of conspiracy theories about the extent of its use, most of which focus on tales of UFOs, government cover-ups and extraterrestrial technology. In 1989, a man named Robert Lazar claimed he worked on alien technology inside Area 51, and that he saw autopsy photographs of aliens inside the facility. Until recently, satellite imagery of Area 51 was censored.
“If the government won’t tell us anything about it, what if every fool on the internet converged on Area 51? What would they do, shoot everyone?” Roberts says in “Trainwreck: Storm Area 51. “It just seemed like a hilarious idea to me. Jokes are funnier when they’re edgy.”