The hype surrounding Daft Punk‘s appearance on The Colbert Report tonight was palpable. Colbchella ’013, sponsored by Hyundai had featured the French legends as their main headlining act. With Saturday Night Live at the heart of their marketing campaign, somehow a triumphant comeback performance on Stephen Colbert’s late night satire seemed plausible.

However instead, the bigwigs stepped in to squash it. In a surprising twist, Colbert expressed comical defiance in the wake of Daft Punk missing their scheduled set on his show. Admitting to only finding out about the faux pas at 2 PM, Stephen broke down exactly what happened for an eager audience. Viacom, owners of Comedy Central and MTV, stepped in with a conflict of interest when Van Toffler, President of MTV Networks, claimed to have rights to Daft Punk’s monumental first post-RAM performance.

Stephen Colbert has no problem poking the bear. Colbert tried to reach a compromise with Van Toffler, seeing if both could arrange for the duo to perform at each of their events. Reading an email, Toffler had replied – “checked with my peeps and they were feeling funky on this one”. From there, both parties ended up leaving the choice to Daft Punk themselves, whose decision was obvious.

Colbert claims “as a company man” he wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, but goes on to announce Daft Punk would be making a ‘surprise appearance’ at the MTV VMAs.