EXCLUSIVE: The Circle, the social experiment format that ran for seven seasons on Netflix, has a surprising new home.

Hulu has ordered a new version of the show, which comes from The Traitors producer Studio Lambert and previously streamed on Netflix.

It marks a surprising move by the Disney streamer. Deadline understands that Hulu scored the rights to the show after Netflix hadn’t renewed it since the seventh season concluded in October 2024.

The Circle was one of Netflix’s first hits in the reality competition space and spawned versions in France and Brazil.

The move comes after Rob Mills, who is EVP, Unscripted and Alternative Entertainment at Walt Disney Television, told Deadline in April that it was making a ““concentrated” push into serialized competition with Parker Posey-fronted series The Mob.

Unlike the Netflix version, which featured civilians, the Hulu version will also feature celebrity contestants. It will also introduce audience voting for the first time in the U.S. and is being “reimagined” as a “fast-turnaround” social experiment.

It will bring everyday players and celebrities to compete side by side in a game of popularity where identity is ever-changing, and anyone can be anyone. Essentially, contestants move into separate apartments in the same building but are kept isolated from each other. They are only allowed to communicate via a specific app using text and photos but they can decide to play the game as themselves or anyone else they like.

The original was described as Catfish-meets-Black Mirror.

The Hulu version will be filmed in real time, giving viewers access as twists and player ratings unfold, with audience votes shaping the game.

The format first launched on Channel 4 in the UK and ran for three seasons between 2018 and 2021. Netflix launched a U.S. version in 2020 with four versions through to 2022. The streamer then launched seasons six and seven in 2024.

The Hulu series is produced by Studio Lambert and WPP’s Motion Entertainment, which produced the original, with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions also on board.

Susan House, who exec produced the Netflix series and has also worked on ABC’s The Bachelor and The Hustler, will serve as showrunner. It will be exec produced by Studio Lambert’s Tim Harcourt, Jack Burgess, Niall O’Driscoll and Stephen Lambert, Motion Entertainment’s Martin Oxley and Chet Fenster and Omaha’s Peyton Manning, Jamie Horowitz and Colin Campbell. All3Media International handles format and tape sales.

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