A New Lord of the Rings Film Is Coming From Stephen Colbert
Today is Tolkien Reading Day, which celebrates when the One Ring was finally destroyed and the dark lord Sauron was defeated. To mark the occasion, filmmaker Peter Jackson posted a short video update concerning the latest Lord of the Rings film, titled The Hunt for Gollum, which is being directed by Andy Serkis. (Serkis famously provided Gollum’s voice and performance in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies.)
Jackson then announced that yet another Lord of the Rings film is in the works, which was introduced by special guest — and Tolkien uber-fan — Stephen Colbert. Colbert, whose knowledge and love of Tolkien is very well-established, pointed out that Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring adaptation skipped over six of Tolkien’s original chapters. That omission, much like the Secret Fire, sparked some inspiration in Colbert:
[T]he thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in The Fellowship that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day. It’s basically the chapter “Three is Company” through “Fog on the Barrow-downs.” And I thought, “Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?”
Working with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, Colbert used those missing chapters as a framing device for a new film, titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past. Here’s the current synopsis, according to Variety:
Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.
Am I skeptical about a new Lord of the Rings film? Yes. But do I trust Stephen Colbert’s faithful zeal for Tolkien? Yes. Also, the fourteen-year gap after the events of The Return of the King does leave the door open for Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd to reprise their roles of Sam, Merry and Pippin in a way that maintains continuity with Jackson’s trilogy. And finally, this raises the question of whether Tom Bombadil, one of the most enigmatic characters in Tolkien’s legendarium, will finally make his big screen appearance, yellow boots and all. (Bombadil has previously appeared in video games and TV series like Amazon’s The Rings of Power.)
Although Colbert and McGee have finished the film’s script with screenwriter Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, no release date has been set for Shadows of the Past. As for Andy Serkis’s The Hunt for Gollum, it will arrive in theaters on December 17, 2027.