Apple TV pulls domestic terrorism series The Savant two days before release

Apple has pulled TV series The Savant from release, two days before it was scheduled to drop on its streaming platform.

The show stars Jessica Chastain as a woman who infiltrates online hate groups in an effort to prevent domestic terrorism.

“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to postpone The Savant. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to releasing the series at a future date,” Apple said in a statement.

While the company did not specify the reason behind the decision, Deadline reported it was likely due to the storyline involving political extremism and violence, and scenes which feature a gunman and a bombing.

The series was inspired by a 2019 Cosmopolitan article, “Is it possible to stop a mass shooting before it happens?” which detailed the actions of an unnamed investigator nicknamed the Savant because of her ability to identify hate groups and individuals on the cusp of committing violence.

The real-world counterpart, a former marine, had been instrumental to stopping would-be mass murderer Michael Finton, who had planned to bomb a federal building, and, at the time of the Cosmo piece, had turned her attention to incels, misogynists and the alt-right.

The trailer for The Savant promised an action-packed, intense thriller with Chastain’s character trying to stop an attack. One line of dialogue was, “I’ve been watching them for a year and a half, he’s recruiting for something. I don’t know what it is but it is massive.”

Apple’s decision to pre-emptively pull the series comes in the context of increased political sensitivities in the US following the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Among the media fallout has included the sacking of MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd after he said of Kirk, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions”.

More notably, there was the week-long suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after the government’s Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr suggested reprisals against Disney if it didn’t take action against the late-night host for comments he made about the reaction to the shooting.

Apple’s decision to delay a dramatised series with no direct reference to Kirk, but rather a show that had thematic resonance to current events, highlights the softly-softly approach American companies are taking, for fear of triggering criticism, especially from Donald Trump and his supporters.

However, the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring film One Battle After Another will still be released at the end of this week and features scenes of sniper action, bombings, political violence, a secret white supremacist cabal, and scenes of a clash between protesters and law enforcement.

Apple has also chosen to not delay this week’s release of Slow Horses season five, which in its first episode features an act of extreme political violence. The series is set in the UK.

Given the prevalence of mass shootings and attacks in the US, American broadcast networks have in the past pulled TV episodes from their schedule due to concerns over the timing against the backdrop of real-world events.

In the trailer for The Savant, it emphasised the commonality of these events with text on screen – “Between 1994 and 2020, 893 extremist attacks took place in America”.

After the Columbine mass school shooting in 1999, two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were delayed for months in the US – one featured a student with a sniper rifle at school while another had scenes of campus-based violence (albeit against a supernatural force) – but went ahead as planned in Australia.

There is also an episode of thriller series Hannibal that was never broadcast after it was yanked following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012.

Mr Robot and Castle both had episodes delayed by one week after plot details hit too close to news events – in the case of the former, it was a former reporter who killed two journalists live on air while the latter was the Boston Marathon bombing.

The Heathers TV reboot was delayed for months after the Parkland high school mass shooting.