Roeper, a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, will leave the show this month after eight years, according to a separate statement posted July 20 on the newspaper's Web site. Disney offered to extend his contract several months ago, but an agreement was never reached, he said in the statement.
Last year, as he negotiated a new contract with Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Ebert, according to the Walt Disney-owned company, had "exercised his right to withhold use of the 'thumbs' until'' he had a new contract. Ebert subsequently has said the show could continue to use the "thumbs'' during negotiations and that he never withheld their use.
On Monday, he said he has plans for those famous digits.
"The trademark still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene's widow, and the thumbs will return,'' he wrote. "We are discussing possibilities, and plan to continue the show's tradition. Disney cannot use the 'thumbs.'"
Ebert didn't elaborate on future possibilities. Nor did he say what - if any - role Roeper, whose work he praised, will have.
But Roeper, in his own announcement that he was leaving the program, hinted that perhaps his partnership with Ebert may not be over.
Ebert's announcement brings to a close a chapter in one of the longest running shows in television history. In 1975, Siskel and Ebert, two competing Chicago newspaper film reviewers, launched a program on Chicago's public broadcasting's WTTW. The two jumped to commercial television through the Tribune Co's TV syndication wing in 1982, switching to Disney in 1986.
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