Netflix’s Trainwreck Documentaries, Helped By Poop Cruises and American Apparel, Show Why Streamer Is Scheduling More Carnage

Three years ago, Netflix explored the chaos and carnage of the Woodstock ’99 music festival in a three-part documentary series – Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.

The series performed well for the streamer with 20.3M hours viewed – the metric Netflix previously used – entering its top ten charts at number eight.

Then nothing, until now. The Trainwreck strand is now set to explode this summer with a total of eight more films and series.

It’s clear why the streamer has decided to ramp up these projects; they are relatively cheap, often fast-turnaround documentaries about major pop culture moments and they rate.

This week, Trainwreck: Poop Cruise debuted with 21.1M views (or 19.3M hours in old money) in its first week of release and this week added another 7.1M views in its second, coming in at sixth in its English language film list.

The doc tells the story of the 4,000 passengers and crew on board a four day round trip from Galveston, Texas to Cozumel, Mexico that saw raw sewage leak out over the ship.

It was only behind Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel in the charts, which stitched up 7.8M views in its first week. Directed by Sally Rose Griffiths, it tells the story, again, of the downfall of Dov Charney’s clothing brand.

These follow Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, which launched on June 10 and tells the story of the catastrophe that left 10 festival goers dead at a Travis Scott-hosted event. It opened with 6.2M views and scored 7.3M views in its second week. It was directed by Yemi Bamiro.

The story of Rob Ford, the Toronto mayor who descended into scandal and alleged crack cocaine use was told in Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, which came out on June 17. That doc, which was directed by Shianne Brown, secured 6.4M views in its first week.

Today, Netflix launches Trainwreck: The Real Project X, which tells the story of a teenage girl in the small Dutch town of Haren who created a Facebook event for her sixteenth birthday party, but mistakenly mades it public instead of private and it soon went viral before turning into a riot.

Trainwreck: Balloon Boy, the story of the 2009 tale of a father in Fort Collins Colorado who calls 911, claiming that his home-made flying saucer has escaped from the back yard, carrying his six-year-old son inside is next on July 15 and directed by Gillian Pachter.

Trainwreck: P.I. Moms, out July 22, explores the Lifetime reality show about a private investigation agency staffed by soccer moms who are accused of running an illegal drug operation on the side, abetted by a corrupt cop.

Finally, Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 explores how 20-year old Matty Roberts created a Facebook event inviting people to storm the classified Air Force facility Area 51 in the Nevada desert. It comes out on July 29.

Astroworld Tragedy was produced by Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story producer Passion Pictures, while all of the others were produced by Raw Television, the All3Media-backed company behind series such as Don’t F**k with Cats and Three Identical Strangers, in association with advertising agency BBH (Poop Cruise is just Raw).

Given the numbers, and the cost, expect Netflix to dredge up plenty more tails of carnage and chaos for another season of the Trainwreck strand soon.