Stephen Colbert writing a new Lord Of The Rings movie with his son

Share this Article:

Stephen Colbert has set up his next project after The Late Show wraps up: a new Lord Of The Rings movie. We’re still eagerly waiting for Andy Serkis’ The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum, which is coming our way in December 2027, but there’s more Middle-earth adventures being planned already. Peter Jackson ... Stephen Colbert writing a new Lord Of The Rings movie with his son

Stephen Colbert has set up his next project after The Late Show wraps up: a new Lord Of The Rings movie.

We’re still eagerly waiting for Andy Serkis’ The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum, which is coming our way in December 2027, but there’s more Middle-earth adventures being planned already.

Peter Jackson took over Warner Bros’ social media accounts with a video that opened with an update on The Hunt For Gollum. “Andy is doing a terrific job. It’s looking amazing. The script is coming together really well and I think it’s going to be a really good film,” Jackson promised.

But the real surprise was the announcement of a completely new Lord Of The Rings movie, particularly the team behind it, headed up by Stephen Colbert – who appeared in the video.

“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [‘The Fellowship of the Ring’] that ya’ll never developed into the first movie back in the day. It’s basically the chapter ‘Three is Company’ [Chapter III] through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’ [Chapter VIII]. 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?’”

Colbert is writing the new film with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the scripts for the original trilogy and The Hobbit movies. Tentatively titled The Lord Of The Rings: Shadows Of The Past, it will bring to life the chapters of The Fellowship Of The Ring that didn’t make it into Jackson’s movie.

Here’s a synopsis:

“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.”

Colbert is a massive Tolkien fan, so he certainly knows his Elves from his Ents. The talk show host even had a cameo in Jackson’s The Desolation Of Smaug.

Colbert’s talk show, The Late Night With Stephen Colbert, will be wrapping up this year, with the final episode airing this May. CBS’ decision to not continue the show proved to be quite controversial, but Colbert is clearly moving on.

No word on whether original stars Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd would return to their roles as Sam, Merry and Pippin or who might be directing the new film, but we’re sure news of that will follow.