Hulu Pulls ASTROWORLD Doc Hours After Publishing

On December 1, 2021, Hulu posted a new documentary, originally produced by ABC, called ASTROWORLD: Concert From Hell. Just a few hours later, they pulled it off of their streaming service. They quickly realized this was a mistake, but the internet was much quicker to screenshot and react on social media.

Hulu wasn’t the first to mishandle this event. Some of these posts from companies immediately following the Mass Casualty Event at ASTROWORLD in Houston, TX. were not in good taste. Failing to cancel their scheduled posts, sneaker and culture accounts on twitter (in now deleted tweets) were posting mere hours after the tragedy about upcoming Travis Scott Nike Air Max shoes and new music. Nike had the good idea to pause the release of all Travis Scott collaborations for the near-term, though they delayed quite some time on postponing the sneaker launches that had been announced before the tragedy. Apple Music took down the recording of the concert immediately. 

Source: Diet Prada (Instagram)

Hulu, apparently, didn’t get the message, and chose to rush a piece of repurposed news content labeled a documentary to their streaming service. As Diet Prada called out: “Many tweets decried the insensitivity of the release, noting that there were still victims who still haven’t been laid to rest. Another pointed out that the general production timeline for documentary films is 2-3 months at minimum. Some that watched the documentary said the content was biased, placing blame on concert attendees and omitting key eyewitness interviews with emergency personnel.” 

In a statement, a Hulu spokesperson told Variety, “This was an investigative local news special from ABC13/KTRK-TV in Houston that originally aired on November 20th. This was not a Hulu documentary and has since been removed to avoid confusion.” As of this writing, Hulu has not apologized for the poorly timed release or its content.

Google still has the page indexed, but the link leads to a 404 not found error. 

With regard to Travis Scott/ASTROWORLD content, our team at InclusiCheck would advise to hold on all events, sneaker releases, collaborations, re-selling, and media until the families have time to bury those they lost, the lawsuits start to work themselves through the courts and there is a more full understanding of what transpired at the event. This tweet sums it up perfectly: “Great documentaries are done when all the facts are laid out. Not enough time has passed to fully discuss this.”