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Jon Stewart will be taking a break this summer from The Daily Show grind.

In a surprise move, the host announced today that he is taking an 12-week break from the Comedy Central smash in order to make his directorial debut.

He will go behind the camera for Rosewater, an adaptation of the book “Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival.”

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In Stewart’s absence, British correspondent John Oliver will sit in for eight weeks of new episodes.

 

The film, meanwhile, will be based on Maziar Bahari’s nightmare of leaving London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential elections.

Leaving an expecting fiancee behind, the BBC journalist thought he would staying for a week – and instead spent the next 118 days in an Iran prison, brutally interrogated by a man he knew only by one thing: he smelled like Rosewater.

Not exactly funny material for the comedian. But most definitely an important work.