Jon Stewart Will Take a Summer Hiatus From The Daily Show

Daily Show host Jon Stewart is taking a three month hiatus from his nightly news-comedy show on Comedy Central. During the interim, regular contributor John Oliver will take over the hosting duties, a report on Deadline.com states.

Stewart is taking the break so he can direct his feature film debut, Rosewater. A screenplay that Stewart wrote, based on the novel, And Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.

Speaking to The New York Times, Stewart said:

I am a television person who is accustomed to having a thought at 10 a.m. and having it out there at 6:30 p.m. and moving on, so this is a little scary, yes,

But one of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves, and I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.

The book is based on the true life story of Maziar who left London in 2009 to cover the Iranian presidential election. An innocent journalist for the BBC, he was arrested and spent 188 days in a prison in Iran being tortured. Maziar has previously appeared as a guest on The Daily Show.