Jon Stewart Taking 'Daily Show' Hiatus to Direct First Movie

Jon Stewart on the set of 'The Daily Show'

Jon Stewart will take 12 weeks off from The Daily Show this summer to direct his first film, Rosewater, with longtime correspondent John Oliver sitting in as host for eight weeks of new shows, Deadline Hollywood reports.

Stewart also wrote the screenplay for Rosewater, which he adapted from the book Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity and Survival by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.

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A BBC journalist, Bahari left his pregnant fiancé in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential elections; his scheduled weeklong trip turned into a 118 day ordeal in one of Iran's most notorious prisons, where he was brutally interrogated by a man who smelled like Rosewater.

Outside his directorial and writing duties, Stewart himself played a bit part in Bahari's story: The journalist was held under suspicion that he was a spy, and one of the items used against him was an appearance on The Daily Show.

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