Jimmy Kimmel has reportedly decided not to compete with Stephen Colbert’s final late night show.
The last ever episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is set to air on CBS on Thursday, May 21.
LateNighter reports that Kimmel told the site personally that “his ABC show will not produce a new episode next Thursday out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! is expected to air a rerun that evening. The decision has some precedence, with Kimmel also choosing not to take the air in 2015 opposite David Letterman’s final show as host of The Late Show.
NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon remains set to air a new episode next Thursday. The Independent has approached Kimmel and Fallon for comment.
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It was announced last July that CBS would be canceling the long-running Late Show. In announcing the show’s cancellation, the network described the host as “irreplaceable” and said it will retire the long-running franchise, citing a “financial decision.”
In the months since the cancellation, Colbert has repeatedly taken aim at CBS and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. In one episode, Colbert took a pointed shot at his network’s leadership while also mocking Donald Trump over the so-called Board of Peace’s billion-dollar membership fee, quipping that CBS paid “just $16 million” to “obey” the president.
Paramount decided to cancel Colbert’s show just days before the Trump administration approved the company’s merger with David Ellison’s Skydance. Since then, Colbert has spent time zinging his corporate bosses on his way out the door.
The host, who has long been a Trump antagonist, was highly critical of the Paramount settlement with the president immediately after it was announced in July, calling it “big, fat bribe” and noting that legal experts called Trump’s lawsuit frivolous and without merit.
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Days later, CBS revealed that it was canceling the Late Show and Colbert would be leaving the network in May – something that the president had repeatedly called for over the years.
While the network said the decision was purely a financial one due to declining ad revenues for late-night television, CBS staffers claimed it was a continuation of the “Trump shakedown” that began with the settlement.
After departing late night, Colbert’s next role will see him write a new Lord of the Rings film.
It was Peter Jackson who shared the surprise news in March with a video in which he and Colbert announced the project, currently titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.