08/10/2026
On November 5, 2021, ten people went to a concert in Houston and never came home. They were 9 to 27 years old. The Houston Police Department ruled that every one of those deaths and hundreds of additional injuries were completely preventable.
This past week, one month before the fifth anniversary, Rolling Loud: The Movie opened in theaters. It is a raunchy “comedy” about a father who sneaks his 13-year-old son into a hip-hop festival headlined by Travis Scott, who appears in the film, and then loses track of him. It was produced by Live Nation Studios, which was also the promoter of Travis Scott’s Astroworld.
We are disgusted and deeply disturbed by this film.
What troubles us most is that the film producers know better. Crowd safety is acknowledged early in the story, then abandoned for the rest of it, as if it were a social checkbox rather than the difference between a night out and a funeral. Crowd safety research is clear that crowd crushes are not random accidents. They are foreseeable and preventable when density, movement and communication are planned for, and when someone has the authority to stop the show. A film that treats safety as an afterthought sends that message to every fan heading to a festival.
To the families of the other nine victims of Travis Scott’s Astroworld: we see you, and we stand with you. We will have more to say as the anniversary approaches.
Every fan deserves to go home safely.
