Stephen Colbert leaves The Late Show and immediately dives into a new Lord of the Rings project with Peter Jackson, while a separate Gollum film is slated for Dec. 17, 2027
The entertainment world got an unexpected crossover when comedian and host Stephen Colbert disclosed plans to move from late-night television to Middle-earth. After stepping away from The Late Show on CBS on May 21, Colbert will shift his creative energy into writing a feature for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past. The project pairs Colbert with experienced Tolkien screenwriters and producers, promising a collaboration that blends fresh perspective with established filmcraft.
Colbert said the screenplay will draw on a specific book chapter, the early Fellowship episode known as “Fogs on the Barrow-downs”, and that he hopes the film will honor both J.R.R. Tolkien’s text and the cinematic language Peter Jackson’s films established. Joining him in the writers’ room are Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee, while the production roster includes Sir Peter Jackson and Dame Fran Walsh. The announcement arrived in a video conversation with Jackson, and it underlines how the new film aims to connect to material the original adaptations left largely unexplored.
Shadow of the Past is described as taking place fourteen years after the death of Frodo. In this period, longtime companions Sam, Merry, and Pippin revisit the route of their earlier journey while Sam’s daughter Elanor uncovers a secret that suggests the War of the Ring might have nearly failed before it truly began. The film’s inspiration comes from the Barrow-downs episode where hobbits encounter a Barrow-wight and become trapped in a mist that hides darker forces. That sequence is compact in text but rich in mood, and the creative team intends to expand it into a full cinematic narrative.
Colbert has framed his goal as attempting to remain faithful to the spirit of Tolkien’s prose while also aligning with the aesthetic expectations set by the earlier films. He noted that the six early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring offered scenes that were not developed in Jackson’s first trilogy, and those moments fuel his interest. The combination of Colbert’s fandom and the veterans’ experience suggests the screenplay will try to balance reverence for the source with narrative invention, tapping into both literary detail and cinematic continuity.
Alongside Colbert’s film, the studio has announced a second Middle-earth feature, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, with Andy Serkis directing and reprising his role as Gollum. That project is scheduled for release on Dec. 17, 2027. Unlike the Barrow-downs adaptation, Serkis’s film zeroes in on a single character and the decades-long arc that bridges The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It will draw on scattered passages in Tolkien’s works — particularly the conversations and appendices that sketch out Gollum’s movements and how he came under Sauron’s shadow.
The Hunt for Gollum is set in the interlude after Bilbo’s birthday and before the Fellowship reaches Moria, overlapping with parts of the first film’s timeline. The film reportedly explores Gollum’s psychology, his origins as Sméagol, and the pursuit that brings him into contact with characters such as Aragorn and the Woodland Realm. Screenwriters on that project include Dame Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Arty Papageorgiou, and Phoebe Gittins, a team intent on threading disparate textual clues into a cohesive origin-and-hunt story.
The renewed focus on niche episodes and character backstory arrives after decades of global success for both the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film series, which together have grossed more than $5.9 billion worldwide. Creators face the dual task of honoring what fans revere about Jackson’s original trilogy while avoiding the stylistic missteps some critics attributed to the later Hobbit films. Questions include how to balance practical effects with modern visual tools, whether key performers will return, and how to weave source fragments from the appendices into unified screen narratives.
Production timelines and casting choices will determine how these films ultimately land with audiences. Colbert himself joked that he would only have time to take on the project once he left late-night hosting duties, and his long-time fandom — from Comic-Con panels to public interviews — positions him as a passionate steward rather than a casual adapter. With Jackson, Walsh, Boyens, Serkis and other returning collaborators involved, the two announced films look to expand the cinematic Middle-earth in different directions: one by mining an atmospheric chapter, the other by tracing Gollum’s fractured path.
Together, these efforts reflect a franchise strategy that blends new creative voices with proven veterans. Whether audiences will embrace more concentrated, chapter-driven cinema alongside sweeping epics remains to be seen, but for now the announcements mark a clear recommitment to exploring lesser-told corners of Tolkien’s world on the big screen.