Stephen Colbert is taking his Lord of the Rings fandom to its logical extreme: helping make an actual Lord of the Rings movie.
Warner Bros. announced Tuesday that Colbert and his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, are developing a new film in the franchise called The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past. The project will follow Andy Serkis’ The Hunt for Gollum, which Peter Jackson said is currently in the works and slated for 2027.
In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO
— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026
For anyone who’s paid even mild attention to Colbert over the years, this makes almost too much sense. The man has built an entire side reputation on being deeply, unapologetically obsessed with Tolkien.
According to Colbert, the idea came from revisiting a stretch of The Fellowship of the Ring that Jackson’s original films skipped over — specifically the early chapters between “Three Is Company” and “Fog on the Barrow-Downs.” Colbert said he kept coming back to those sections and started wondering whether they could become their own story while still fitting within the world Jackson already built on screen.
He brought the idea to McGee, and the two came up with a framing device for the film before taking it to Jackson. Over the last two years, they’ve been developing the script with Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit films.
The official logline says the movie takes place 14 years after Frodo’s passing, with Sam, Merry and Pippin retracing the first steps of their original journey. At the same time, Sam’s daughter Elanor uncovers a buried secret tied to how close the War of the Ring came to ending very differently.
It’s Colbert’s first major blockbuster development project, though he’s not exactly new to Middle-earth. He had a small role in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and even directed Jackson, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Wood in a 2019 short set in Tolkien’s world.
No release date has been announced for Shadows of the Past yet. Still, the idea of giving one of pop culture’s most committed Tolkien nerds the keys to Middle-earth feels either deeply promising or incredibly dangerous, depending on how protective you are of the Shire.
