Jon Stewart’s ‘The Downside’ Not Shifting Ahead at Apple Amid Artistic Variations

Jon Stewart is making an early exit from Apple.

The previous Every day Present host’s return to the speak present area has ended prematurely as Apple has deserted plans for an eight-episode third season of the Stewart-hosted sequence The Downside, sources verify to The Hollywood Reporter.

Based on the New York Occasions, which first reported the information, the cancellation got here after artistic variations between the iPhone maker and Stewart over potential matters and visitors for The Downside. The NYT reported that Stewart knowledgeable his workers Thursday that Apple pushed again on matters referring to China and synthetic intelligence. Manufacturing on season three was already underneath approach, with filming poised to start shortly.

Apple declined to remark.

Sources inform THR that there had been rigidity between Apple and Stewart forward of the present’s third season return over matters featured on The Downside. Those self same sources word that Apple approached Stewart and knowledgeable the host that each side wanted to be “aligned” concerning matters on the present. Stewart, sources say, balked on the thought of being “hamstrung” by Apple, which threatened to cancel the sequence. Stewart, sources say, needed to have full artistic management of the sequence and, after Apple threatened to cancel the sequence, advised the tech firm that he was strolling away from the present slightly than have his fingers tied.

The choice to “unrenew” The Downside got here after Apple and Stewart shifted The Downside to a weekly launch for its second season after the freshman batch of episodes launched each different week in fall 2021.

Stewart signed a multiple-year pact with Apple in 2020 that included the present affairs present that turned The Downside and different improvement tasks by way of his Busboy Productions banner.

Stewart exec produced The Downside with showrunner Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon and former HBO CEO Richard Plepler by way of the latter’s Eden Productions. Chris McShane was co-EP, Lorrie Baranek was supervising producer and Chelsea Devantez was head author.

Throughout its two-season run, The Downside earned 5 Emmy nominations, together with for speak sequence and writing.