What's next for Jon Stewart? Despite months of anticipation and excitement among Daily Show fans, Stewart's previously announced animated project with HBO is not going to happen. In a statement obtained by the New York Times Tuesday night, HBO confirmed the mutual decision to scrap the digital shorts in favor of something else. What exactly that "something else" is, however, has not been revealed.
"HBO and Jon Stewart have decided not to proceed with a short form digital animated project," an HBO rep said. "We all thought the project had great potential, but there were technical issues in terms of production and distribution that proved too difficult given the quick turnaround and topical nature of the material." HBO also said they have "future projects" with Stewart that should be disclosed soon.
As recently as November of last year, HBO's programming president toldEntertainment Weekly that Stewart was developing an animation studio with an anticipated premiere window of early 2017. "My hope is that it's up and running and putting out content in first quarter of '17," Casey Bloys said at the time. "Does the election change things? I think it's more important, now more than ever, that we have voices like that who will parse the information and call out what's going on."
Stewart inked a four-year deal with the network back in 2015 that also included first-look options on movie and TV projects. "Appearing on television 22 minutes a night clearly broke me," Stewart said in a statement to Variety when the deal was announced. "I'm pretty sure I can produce a few minutes of content every now and again."
Whatever comes out of that HBO deal now is anyone's guess, but let's just hope whatever it is happens soon. Nothing good is happening anywhere in the world right now.
