Jon Watts Headshot Clown Still Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Turbine Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Sometimes, actors and filmmakers have to stretch the truth to get their big break. For example, if young actors are asked whether they can ice skate or ride a horse, the answer is always yes. In the case of MCU Spider-Man director Jon Watts, it was concocting a fake trailer, circa 2010, for a child-eating clown movie called Clown, as if it belonged to horror connoisseur Eli Roth. Luckily, when Roth caught wind of the gambit that Watts and his co-writer, Christopher D. Ford, conceived, he was feeling generous, not litigious. After all, he was only a few years removed from making Thanksgiving, one of the five faux-trailers to be featured in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. Roth then asked Watts and Ford if they had a feature-length script for Clown, and while they most definitely did not, the two best friends agreed that one more falsehood couldn't hurt. Related Stories Movies Jon Watts Changed Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's 'Spider-Man' Returns in 'No Way Home' Because of Reddit Sleuths Movies 'Spider-Man' Director Jon Watts Reveals Why He Dropped Out of 'The Fantastic Four' "We lied. We said, 'We definitely have the script all worked out and ready to go.' So while we scrambled to get that together, Eli took the trailer to AFM and pre-sold all the foreign rights," Watts tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Clown's newly remastered 4K Blu-ray release via Turbine. Watts and Ford quickly turned their viral fictitious trailer into a proper script, one that's centered on a mildly successful realtor and family man named Kent McCoy (Andy Powers). Due to a new listing, Kent is running slightly late for his son Jack's (Christian Distefano) 7th birthday party. And upon receiving a call that his rent-a-clown was double booked, he chooses to rummage through the leftover possessions of the deceased homeowner whose property he's trying to sell. That's when he discovers an old-timey clown costume he can wear to the party. Kent may have saved his son's birthday, but he quickly realizes that the clown suit won't come off no matter what he does. He then makes the chilling discovery by way of Peter Stormare's costumer character that the clown garb stems from the skin and hair of a Nordic demon called the Clöyne. If Kent wants to successfully stop his ever-increasing transformation into the Clöyne and rid the possession, he has to consume five children to satisfy the demon's appetite. Shortly before filming was scheduled to begin, Roth also facilitated a distribution deal with the Weinstein brothers' genre banner, Dimension Films. Fortunately, Watts didn't have to contend with any of the company's patented interference during post-production, but he did receive an oddly specific note from one of the brothers during pre-production. "The son character, Jack, his name was going to be Jake, but then Bob Weinstein asked us to change it because his son's name was Jake," Watts recalls. "He didn't like the idea of a little Jake being in jeopardy. So we always wanted the kid to be named Jake after [future Thunderbolts* director] Jake Schreier, but we had to change it at the last minute." Watts may not have had his edit hijacked, but he was by no means out of the woods in terms of Clown's release. In 2014, Dimension opted to bury the film domestically, and it wasn't until Clown grossed $4.3 million internationally (against a $1.5 million budget) that they decided to give it a nominal U.S. release in the summer of 2016. Clown would go on to gross a meager $55K domestically after spending just two weeks in 100 theaters or less. Watts can only speculate as to why the film didn't get the robust theatrical push it was promised. One possible explanation is that Harvey Weinstein went on TV in early 2014 to say that he'd prioritize less violent movies going forward, so perhaps Clown became a casualty of that pivot. Watts also remembers an advance screening that likely sealed the film's fate. "I think Bob [Weinstein] saw it for the very first time when we did a preview screening, and he was just absolutely horrified," Watts shares. "He didn't talk to any of us, and he just walked out of the theater at the end. That's how that ended." In retrospect, Watts still can't help but wonder what Clown would've done had it been given a genuine theatrical push. Maybe it could've reaped the benefits that Andy Muschietti's It movies and the Terrifier sequels would enjoy in the years that followed. Watts and Ford even game-planned an entire Clown universe in the event of its success. "I always wonder what would've happened. We always planned it as a seven-part epic. So as soon as the world is ready, we've got them all lined up