Stephen Colbert will likely host an election night special for Showtime

By Brad Jones Published August 12, 2016

Stephen-Colbert — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Stephen Colbert has certainly broadened the horizons of his comedy to appeal to a wider audience as the host of The Late Show, but his recent coverage of the national conventions for both the democrat and republican parties has shown that politics still brings out his best. As a result, we’re set to see more of Colbert’s take on the election — but not on CBS.

Showtime president David Nevins has announced that Colbert has been picked to host a live election night special for the premium cable network, speaking at a stop on the Television Critics Association summer press tour. While the deal is yet to be hashed out, it’s understood that there’s interest from both sides.

Recommended Videos

Colbert has already been given the night off from The Late Show on election night, according to a report from Variety. Between this detail, and the fact that Showtime is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CBS Corporation, there shouldn’t be any barriers preventing him from hosting the special.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“Stephen wants to do it, I want to do it, the studio wants to do it,” said Nevins. He would go on to state that Colbert would be “unfettered,” indicating that he would be free to talk politics, without the limitations he’s subject to on The Late Show.

Nevins pitches the special as an alternative to traditional news coverage of the election. He suggested that the comedian would still be delivering the results state-by-state, but interspersed with the type of material that earned him an army of devoted fans during his work on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Colbert took over the reins of The Late Show in September 2015, but has struggled to compete with Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show in terms of ratings. However, between being tapped for a high-profile election special on Showtime, and continued confirmation that Colbert won’t be swapping slots with The Late Late Show host James Corden, it seems that the host still has the backing of CBS.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Entertainment

‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ director says the movie has ‘the most difficult thing we’ve ever done’

Tom Cruise stares with a concerned look on his face.

The Mission: Impossible movies are known at this point for including at least one death-defying stunt from star Tom Cruise. Cruise seems hellbent on putting his life in danger for the benefit of audiences, and thus far, that dedication has led to some pretty excellent movies.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning may or may not be the final installment in the franchise, but director Christopher McQuarrie is already suggesting that the movie has one of the biggest stunts in the franchise's history. In speaking with Empire (per GamesRadar), he said that the film contains "the most difficult thing" they've ever done with the series. Unfortunately, he didn't go into detail about what the sequence involved.

Entertainment

Adam Scott learned to run for the ‘Severance’ opening sequence by watching Tom Cruise

Adam Scott holds blue balloons in Severance season 2.

Few men in the history of cinema have more famous runs than Tom Cruise, so it makes sense that Adam Scott turned to the movie star when it came time for his major running sequence in the Severance season 2 premiere.

Scott discussed the opening scene with executive producer and director Ben Stiller on the official Severance podcast and also explained just how long the sequence took to shoot.

Entertainment

20 years ago, they brought a John Carpenter classic into the 2000s

Laurence Fishburne and Drea de Matteo crouch by a window in a shot from the 2005 movie Assault on Precinct 13.

The first thing you miss is the music. That funky, synthesizer throb. That heartbeat of stone-cold menace. Everyone loves the iconic tinkle of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme, but two years earlier, he composed a score every bit as infectiously stark, instantly setting the tone of his low-budget 1976 thriller Assault on Precinct 13. When Hollywood got around to remaking Assault in 2005, they went a different way musically. (The trend of modern genre movies with throwback electronic soundtracks was still a few years off.) Right from the jump, you feel the difference. The conspicuous absence of vintage Carpenter boogie is merely the most audible sign that a minimalist classic has been fruitlessly maximalized.

In the dubious field of remaking John Carpenter movies (a matter on which the director himself has been bluntly, hilariously pragmatic), the 21st-century Assault on Precinct 13 sits far from the bottom. It might, in fact, be the cream of a crop that includes an entirely forgettable upgrade of The Fog that opened just a few months later, a redundant prequel to The Thing, and Rob Zombie’s numbingly extreme Halloween. But the aughts Assault, which turns 20 years old today, also neatly illustrates and maybe exemplifies how these do-overs go wrong: They always manage to sacrifice the elegant simplicity of Carpenter’s work.