Warner Bros. chose Tolkien Reading Day — March 25 — to reveal what may be the most unexpected creative pairing in the history of Middle-earth on screen: Stephen Colbert is writing the next Lord of the Rings movie.
In a video shared on X, LOTR director Peter Jackson first offered a brief update on The Hunt for Gollum, the Andy Serkis-directed film slated for 2027.
“Andy is doing a terrific job. It’s looking amazing,” Jackson said at the start of the announcement. “The script is coming together really well and I think it’s going to be a really good film.”
But Jackson spent considerably more time introducing the project coming after The Hunt for Gollum — and he didn’t make the announcement alone.
Stephen Colbert Steps Behind the Page
Jackson brought in Colbert, who will enter a new professional chapter when The Late Show with Stephen Colbert retires on May 21, 2026, to deliver the news himself. The film will be titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past.
“You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson.
Colbert explained that he developed the concept for the film with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, before approaching Jackson about the idea. The two then worked with Philippa Boyens — the Academy Award-winning co-writer of the original trilogy — on the script.
“It took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call,” Colbert said in the video. “But about two years ago, I did. You liked it enough to talk to me about it.”
The involvement of both Jackson and Boyens signals a direct creative bridge to the original trilogy, a detail that carries significant weight.
What to Know About ‘Shadows of the Past’
Here’s where the source material specifics get compelling. The film will focus on chapters three through six from The Fellowship of the Ring and will officially serve as a sequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The logline, according to Variety, tells fans exactly what’s to come in the upcoming film.
“Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo — Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure,” the logline reads. “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 title itself — “Shadows of the Past” — shares its name with chapter two of Fellowship, the very chapter where Gandalf reveals the Ring’s true nature to Frodo.
Notably, the film draws from the chapters that follow: three through six, the stretch covering the hobbits’ departure from the Shire through their perilous encounters on the road to Buckland.
The framing device — set fourteen years after Frodo’s passing and centered on Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Sam’s daughter Elanor — positions the film squarely in the Fourth Age while looking back at events from the original quest.
Why Colbert? Peter Jackson Answered That Years Ago
For anyone questioning Colbert’s credentials, Jackson himself addressed this in no uncertain terms.
“I have never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life. His encyclopedic knowledge of Tolkien is spectacular, and points to a deprived childhood in some respects,” Jackson told Entertainment Weekly in 2012.
Colbert’s Tolkien bona fides extend well beyond superfandom. He, along with his wife and kids, made a cameo in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
He also moderated a panel for The Hobbit at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014. And he wrote, directed and starred in Darrylgorn, an eight-minute short film set in JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth, per Variety.
This isn’t a celebrity vanity project. Colbert has spent decades demonstrating fluency with the source material — and now, with Boyens and Jackson alongside him, he’s putting that knowledge on the page.
