Tongues are wagging over Apple TV+ benching “The Savant,” a new series following a hate-crime specialist tracking evil white men.
The Jessica Chastain vehicle was slated to debut on September 26. Now? There’s no new release date set. Why the dramatic move? Apple won’t exactly say, but many have suggested that the show features a Charlie Kirk-like figure painted in a negative light.
Well, we’ve seen the show’s first four episodes, and here’s the ugly truth. The series is ripped from a progressive’s fever dream, a tale completely disconnected from today’s headlines. Far from being awash in right-wing violence, we’re seeing the Left rise up in repulsive fury, from the assassination of Charlie Kirk to repeated attacks on ICE facilities and officials. And let’s not forget not one but two assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
Even The Atlantic and Axios begrudgingly admit political violence is now a Left-leaning problem. So does Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman.
That makes “The Savant’s” release problematic, to use the Left’s vernacular.
Chastain plays Jodi Goodwin, an anti-hate specialist going digitally undercover to smoke out a network of white racists. She’s supposed to be so good at her job that she’s nicknamed The Savant. But really, she just knows how to use Google and impersonate a racist online.
She also poses as someone who happily rapes innocent women to impress would-be collaborators. The first few episodes find Jodi trying to earn the trust of a white supremacist (Pablo Schreiber) gathering a team to commit future violence.
We’re also shown many budding white supremacists glued to their phones to get their latest marching orders.
“The Savant” checks plenty of identity politics boxes. Our heroine is in an interracial marriage. Her boss, played by Michael Patrick Thornton, uses a wheelchair (as does the actor off-screen). Her good friend (Dagmara Dominczyk) is a lesbian about to have her first child with her partner. We even get a brief lecture on climate change. The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which targeted Turning Point USA in recent years, also gets a shout-out.
The villains, of course, are uniformly white. They hate Jews, illegal immigrants, and people of color. They’re also not very bright, trusting people outside of their inner circle in ways that could easily lead to trouble.
Jodi’s choice of subjects is odd for someone trying to stop violent attacks across America. Has she read the news lately? Heck, you could write a whole season focusing on academia’s radical, pro-Palestinian movement or Antifa. Alas, the first four episodes of the eight-part series show nothing beyond evil white supremacists.
Of course, Hollywood would never make a story implicating progressive radicals. With few exceptions, celebrities won’t even bring up academia’s ghoulish Hamas-friendly protests.
“The Savant” isn’t tagging the on-screen villains as conservatives, per se. There are no sucker-punch style markers like red MAGA hats or Ted Nugent concert tees. Party labels aren’t included here, either, and Jodi’s husband (Nnamdi Asomugha) is an active military member. That restraint is surprising, but audiences will connect enough dots on their own.
This isn’t the first time Hollywood has had second thoughts about releasing violent content due to current events. The 2020 film “The Hunt” got bumped based on its incendiary subject matter and recent mass shooting headlines around its initial 2019 release date. The film followed a band of progressive elites hunting conservatives for sport.
The actual film wasn’t as bombastic as that plotline suggests, finding fault on both sides and attacking our growing partisan fury. It proved controversial enough to coax Universal to delay its release, and President Trump’s comments on the film fanned the flames.
More recently, Comedy Central pulled a recent episode of “South Park” satirizing Kirk. The late conservative icon had seen the show in question and praised it, proving he had a better sense of humor than his critics imagined.
Some media outlets did the ol’ “just asking questions” bit regarding “The Savant’s” benching, suggesting fear of President Trump forced Apple to delay the show’s release. That came after media outlets falsely blamed the president for removing Jimmy Kimmel from his ABC late-night perch.
There’s zero proof of that, but the chin-stroking speculation happened all the same. Here’s Variety, admitting it’s making up the Trump connection in its opening paragraph.
In a shocking decision, Apple TV+ has postponed the premiere of the Jessica Chastain drama series “The Savant,” offering another chilling example of how business giants are running scared of the Trump administration, and bowing to pressure before it even exists [emphasis added]. The series had been scheduled to premiere on September 26.
Maybe we need a series about serial media malfeasance. That could be released on virtually any date these days and retain its relevance.
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic, and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at HollywoodInToto.com.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.