Daft Punk’d?

Daft Punk’s scheduled appearance on The Colbert Report this Tuesday was called off due to a contractual obligation with Viacom, owner of both Comedy Central and MTV, which said it had secured an exclusive performance by the robots at this month’s MTV Video Music Awards. Or so we thought.

In striking synergy with Death Grips’ no-show-turned-prank earlier this week, it now seems the robots never intended to perform. Billboard reports that the show’s last minute replacement – Robin Thicke performing his hit ‘Blurred Lines’ – was actually planned in advance and taped the previous Tuesday while the singer was in New York, when he also appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

And according to the New York Times, MTV had threatened to cut Daft Punk from the awards if the group also appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show, and would not negotiate despite pleas from Comedy Central.

So was it all a ruse to draw in viewers? Did Stephen Colbert know what was going on the whole time? And will the robots ever perform again? The MTV VMAs take place on 25 August, and as Daft Punk’s appearance still isn’t totally confirmed, the whole fiasco makes it even more likely that we’ll all tune in, right? Guess that’s mission accomplished for MTV.

Death Grips pulled a similar stunt earlier this week, but there’s no doubt as to the rap-punks’ cruel intentions. The band’s tour manager has since admitted that the stage set up (featuring a suicide note as a backdrop) and album playback “was the show”, leaving disgruntled fans to smash up a drum kit that turned out to be a kiddy set rather than Zach Hill’s instrument. [via Pitchfork; CoS]