Severance has become one of Apple TV+’s golden hits, with the workplace thriller renewed for a Season 3. But executive producer and director Ben Stiller reveals he’s stepping away from the director’s chair for the season.
The reason? He’s too busy bringing his other projects to life, including a war movie.
“I’m at the point in my life where I’m like, ‘The clock is ticking,'” Stiller explained in an interview with the LA Times. He also chalks it up to age, where he will soon celebrate turning 60.
“Sixty sounds old. It’s hard to get around it,” said Stiller. “And of course, it’s that other thing of, like, you know what the next one is,” he jokes. It had him thinking, “Time is valuable.”
As a result, Severance showrunner Dan Erickson, Stiller, and the writing team have been working hard planning Season 3 so that Stiller can step away as director for the series.
Instead, he will focus on his feature war movie that is “the true story of a downed airman in occupied France and how he got involved with the French Resistance.”
“These things take time to come together,” commented Stiller. “And the older you get, the more you realize that you only have so much time.”
Since Severance’s premiere in 2022, Stiller has directed 11 of the series’s 19 episodes, including the premieres and finales of Seasons 1 and 2.
Two of his directed episodes even had him nominated for Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series at the Emmys. Stiller will still reportedly be involved in Season 3 as an EP.
He also recently created a documentary-style movie based on his parents, titled Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost, set to premiere on Oct. 17, 2025.
That’s not all, as Stiller also has the fourth installment of the Meet the Parents franchise, Focker-in-Law, where he will reprise his leading role alongside Robert De Niro. Stiller also detailed his continued interest in adapting Rachel Maddow’s podcast “Bag Man” into a movie.
Severance Season 3 has no official release date yet.
