It’s a big day for Stephen Colbert, and, well, all fans of The Lord of the Rings (LoTR) who love Stephen Colbert.
On March 25, in honor of Tolkien Reading Day and what has canonically been recognized as the day the One Ring was destroyed, Warner Bros. released a video announcing the upcoming additions to the LoTR franchise.
Jackson hopped on a video call with Colbert, whose office background featured several memorabilia from the franchise.
“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.”
The late-night host went on to explain that he’s adapting chapters three through eight of FotR, with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and screenwriter Philippe Boyens also working on the script.
Colbert is referring to the chapters “Three is a Company” up to “Fog on the Barrow-downs,” which features Frodo’s travels leaving the Shire up until meeting the mysterious being Tom Bombadil and before they enter the town of Bree, where they meet Aragorn for the first time.
The film, titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past, will follow Samwise Gamgee’s daughter Elanor as she uncovers a “long-buried secret” that could explain “why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it began,” according to its official logline.
Towards the end of the video, Jackson jokingly asked if Colbert would have enough time to work on the script. “It turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer,” the comedian joked back, referencing how The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will be coming to an end this May. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta finish a television show, and then I’m gonna write a movie script, but I will see you all in the Shire.”
In the same video, Jackson also discussed Andy Serkis’ The Hunt for Gollum, which is set to release in 2027. The film will center on Aragorn’s quest to capture Gollum in between The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, with Serkis and Elijah Wood returning to reprise their roles as Gollum and Frodo Baggins respectively.
