Jon Stewart makes directorial debut with Rosewater; sits out Daily Show for 12 weeks

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart is set to make his feature directorial debut, Deadline reports.

He has personally penned the screen adaptation of Maziar Bahari’s memoir Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival.

Titled Rosewater, it tells the true, harrowing tale of a journalist captured in Iran and brutally tortured for 118 days.

The name comes from the scent of Bahari’s interrogator.

Stewart had this to say of the endeavour: ”I am a television person who is accustomed to having a thought at 10 AM and having it out there at 6:30 PM and moving on, so this is a little scary, yes… One of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves.”

Here’s the bad news: it will require a 12-week break from The Daily Show  over the American summer.

Correspondent John Oliver will take over hosting duties over this period.