Lord of the Rings is one of the most iconic fantasy stories, both on the page and on the screen. Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films from the early 2000s were not only extremely popular, but they are considered by many to be masterpieces as well. And the world first created by J.R.R. Tolkien with the novels continues to expand with the upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, but it turns out there are even more stories on the way — including a new Lord of the Rings movie with a surprising writer.
On Tuesday night, Warner Bros. announced that Stephen Colbert is developing a new Lord of the Rings movie. The film, The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert along with Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee. The film will be set fourteen years after the passing of Frodo with Sam, Merry, and Pippin setting 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. The movie is based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eight chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring.
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Stephen Colbert Is A Surprising But Perfect Choice for the New Lord of The Rings Movie
While it might seem a little unusual that someone best known for their work as a late-night host — Colbert has been the host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert since 2015 — his participation in the new Lord of the Rings film actually makes a lot of sense. Colbert is a lifelong Tolkien devotee, someone who knows the books extremely well. He’s previously hosted panels at Comic-Con for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series as well as 2014’s The Hobbit: the Battle of Five Armies. Colbert’s love of Lord of the Rings is evident in his explanation for why this specific story is going to be made into a movie.
“You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me, but the 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,” Colbert said in a video announcing the project.
The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past will come out after the upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Directed by Andy Serkis, that film is expected in theaters on December 17, 2027.
