The two influential film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper announced, separately, that they were leaving the TV show that bears their names.

Ebert, who, together with the late Gene Siskel, founded the show 33 years ago, said yesterday he wanted to quit because Disney-ABC Domestic Television was taking the show “in a new direction” and he did not want to be linked with it anymore.

Roeper also announced he would leave, after his contract had expired after eight seasons and he could not come to financial terms for his new contract with Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The Chicago Sun-Times columnist, whose last show will air over the weekend of Aug. 16-17, said he would start his work as a critic somewhere else, “as the co-host of a movie review show that honors the standards established by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert more than 30 years ago.”

“I will be free to share the details on that program in the near future,” he said.

Disney announced that the new show will be hosted by E! critic Ben Lyons and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.

Lyons is the son of movie reviewer Jeffrey Lyons and the co-host of NBC Universal’s “Reel Talk,” while Mankiewicz is the son of Frank Mankiewicz, the first president of National Public Radio, and grandson of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz.

Ebert and Siskel’s show began on PBS, under the name of “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies,” and was sold to Buena Vista Entertainment in 1986.

Columnist Richard Roeper joined Ebert for the show in 2000, after Siskel’s death.

In a written statement published by Variety, Ebert said that he and Siskel’s widow, Marlene Iglitzen, will retain the show’s trademarked catchphrase ‘two thumbs up’ for a possible future use.