Warner Bros has revealed that New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, known for the iconic Lord of the Rings trilogy, is now working on a new instalment with the working title The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past. Working on the script for the new film is J.R.R Tolkien super fan and talk show host Stephen Colbert.
Stephen Colbert, known for his endless references and obsession with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, will be co-writing the film alongside his son, Peter McGee. Working on the project is probably a dream come true for the talk show host who previously got himself a cameo appearance in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Returning to the writing table is Philippa Boyens who worked on Jackson's original trilogy.
The film is to be based on six specific chapters from The Fellowship of the Ring. Chapters 3 to 8, referred to as “Three is company through Fog on the Barrow Downs”, involve Frodo leaving the Shire and encountering his first black rider and coming across Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil is regarded as one of the most mysterious characters in the books and was originally omitted from the original film trilogy, possibly due to time constraints.
The film's official logline reads, “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 had told Jackson, “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 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?’”
The project will be Colbert's first foray into developing a blockbuster film . He has previously directed Lord of the Rings stars Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Wood, for the 2019 short parody film Darrylgorn, which is set in JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
The Lord of the Rings film series, released in 2001, 2002, and 2003, is considered Jackson’s most celebrated work, earning 17 Oscars in total. Jackson had also adapted Tolkien’s The Hobbit into three films in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Colbert’s The Late Show on CBS will air its last episode on May 21, after the network decided to cancel the show last year.
Peter Jackson is also working on The Hunt for Gollum, which will be released on Dec 17 2027. The film follows Aragorn and Gandalf’s quest to search for Gollum to learn more about Bilbo’s ring, which is later revealed to be the one ring that rules them all in the Lord of the Rings films.