‘Clown Panic’ Trailer: Hulu’s Halloween Doc Revisits 2016’s Great Clown Scare

EXCLUSIVE: Halloween is coming and Hulu is unleashing some Clown Panic. We’ve got the trailer for the clown-scare documentary, which comes from Man on Wire producers Lightbox.

The feature-length doc will be part of Hulu’s ‘Huluween’ lineup. It premieres October 12. Internationally, it will be on Disney+.

Clown Panic unpacks the national drama that unfolded in the U.S. after alleged clown sightings caused hysteria.

What started in 2016 as reports of clowns hiding in the woods in a small South Carolina community quickly escalated, with sightings reported across the country. As clown panic took hold, law enforcement got involved, there were school lockdowns, and TV news and social media went into overdrive.

“It was one thing for there to be a single clown sighting, that wouldn’t have troubled me that much, and then there was a second one … how many more of these are we gonna have,” asks a concerned official in the doc.

The film has interviews with witnesses, law enforcement, clowns and cultural commentators and unpacks how a how a bizarre urban legend could spiral into a national moral panic.

The Hulu doc offers up dark and funny moments. It features interviews with some professional clowns, who saw work fall off a cliff as panic took hold. “I don’t know any clowns that wanna go and kill a bunch of kids,” one says in the trailer. “I mean, that’s your customers.”

Ed Perkins directs Clown Panic and Lightbox’s Jonathan Chinn and Simon Chinn produce. It marks a move into horror for the London and LA-based indie, which counts Apple TV’s Twisted Yoga, Ryan Coogler exec-produced Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time for Nat Geo and Guy Ritchie’s Netflix doc The Diamond Heist among its recent credits.