Peter Jackson to produce Andy Serkis-directed Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum
Warner Bros. Discovery announced that a new Lord Of The Rings movie is set for 2026
Aux News Gollum
Last year, Andy Serkis said he would happily return to Middle-earth if Peter Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens were involved. Seems he’s gotten his wish, and then some: Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Thursday that Jackson would produce a new Lord Of The Rings film, directed by and starring Serkis (via Deadline). On WBD’s quarterly earnings call, CEO David Zaslav said the studio is aiming for a 2026 release of the new movie, which is currently titled Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum.
At the moment, the studio is developing two adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, the first of which is “now in the early stages of script development,” according to Zaslav. The Hunt For Gollum will be written by Walsh, Boyens, and Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou (writers of the WBD animated LOTR film, Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim). Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens released a joint statement (via Deadline) saying, “It is an honour and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker—Gollum! As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”
In his own statement, Serkis—who previously directed Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle and Venom: Let There Be Carnage—said, “Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle Earth Peter, Fran and Philippa. With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our film making family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious…”.
Zaslav first announced that Warner Bros. Discovery would make more LOTR last year, but it’s been on his radar since the beginning of his tenure. In November 2022, six months after assuming the throne, Zaslav put emphasis on WB’s IP: “Batman, Superman, Aquaman, if we can do something with JK on Harry Potter going forward, Lord Of The Rings, what are we doing with Game Of Thrones? What are we doing with a lot of the big franchises that we have? We’re focused on franchises.” Now, two years later, Zaslav is still ringing the same bell with this announcement: “Lord of the Rings is one of the most successful and revered franchises in history and presents a significant opportunity for our theatrical business,” he said on Thursday’s earnings call (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The new Warner Bros. Lord Of The Rings spin-off is, of course, not related to and not to be confused with Amazon Prime Video’s (intended) television franchise, Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power. The intellectual property rights situation is a little bit messy. Warner Bros. Discovery, through its subsidiary New Line Cinema, has a deal with Middle-earth Enterprises (a subdivision of the Embracer Freemode division of Embracer Group, a Swedish video game and media holding company). Middle-earth Enterprises specifically holds the film rights to The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, and therefore the rights to most of Tolkien’s most recognizable characters, including, yes, Gollum.
Meanwhile, Amazon obtained its rights directly from the Tolkien estate, and it has access to the same works (Hobbit and LOTR) for television. But Amazon also has the exclusive rights to the Appendices and anything to do with the Second Age of Middle-earth (LOTR is set in the Third Age). To make its own mark and create its own franchise, The Rings Of Power focused on the Second Age and a cast of mostly new characters. As a result, the television show (the most expensive television show of all time) didn’t really have the cultural impact that the LOTR film trilogy did. Basically, Serkis has a huge leg up on the competition by helming a movie that’s a direct continuation of the hugely popular and culturally significant films. Whether the market becomes oversaturated with Tolkien content, well, that remains to be seen….
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For some time now I’ve been discussing with friends what exactly is going to happen with movies now that so many longstanding franchises are past their prime. Marvel, Warner and superheros generally seem to have gone as far as they can go, Star Wars seems to be focused on streaming, Star Trek is dead, James Bond needs a total reboot, the last Indiana Jones movie flopped, there aren’t any more Hunger Games or Harry Potter books to mine (plus Harry Potter is also going streaming), etc. Dune (which of course is itself a reboot) is the only franchise that seems to have any life currently. Is there anything else folks are working on that could actually be new??? So many promising scifi book series (Old Man’s War, 3 Body Problem and the Expanse all come to mind) that could have been rich multi-movie franchises have all gone straight to streaming/TV.
I don’t have much data to back this up, but with Fallout, Mario bros movie, Zelda and Borderlands movie, etc. series or movies based on videogames seem like the next area to be mined for ideas. Not a new trend obviously, and these are all fairly different in their respective genres. but it’s a trend that seems to be ramping up.
much as i loathe STD (aka the Michael Burnham Experience), it can hardly be said that Star Trek is dead. Strange New Worlds is going strong, there’s a new Starfleet Academy teen drama coming. Lower Decks is an animated hit and Prodigy seems to have survived. There’s that extremely random Michelle Yeoh TV movie coming up…
Unless another streamer like Netflix saves it, Season 5 of Lower Decks has been announced to be it’s last.
And I believe Netflix is only planning on showing the already done second season of Prodigy. I do not believe there are plans for more. Which is a shame because that show really did manage to be a kids Star Trek show that still managed to get and respect Star Trek. I was skeptical based on the character design and concept but was fully blown away by how fun it was to watch with my kids
I have a feeling Paramount isn’t renewing anything until after the sale. So I’m holding out hope there could be more later.
Who in the actual fuck thought that there is an audience for kids and teens shows in the Star Trek universe?!
AApologies I should have said the last movie reboots were dead. There certainly have been many paramount + shows since then!
Personally, I prefer TV series with decent budgets for adaptations of novel series. I don’t think The Expanse would have held up well with each book cut down to a 2-3 hour movie.
I certainly believe that was true for 3 body problem but would have liked to see a higher budget take for Expanse. They could easily carve books into more than one movie if needed, that’s what Dune did…
I’m assuming this won’t result in anything sort of actual new ideas, so if we’re just looking for untapped reboot potential… I’m all all for a Just One of the Guys/Ladybugs gender-swapping-disguise renaissance. I can only imagine what that would look like in 2026. Imagine all the hijinks that will ensue when they kids are trying to evade locker room gential checks!
>_>
Let me come firmly down on the side of “fuck franchises.” I’m as guilty as anyone of paying to see the countless adaptations and sequels and requels and whatever the fuck, but I also recognize that it’s culturally toxic to just keep rehashing the same shit over and over.We don’t need any more Lord of the Rings. The books are great and the Jackson adaptations were pretty damn great and how about something different?
I certainly agree that I don’t need to see a reboot of any franchise that was successful in the last couple decades. But there is a value to telling an extended story over several movies – and plenty of book series out there with great material! I’d love to see a new film franchise emerge but again so many good candidates are going to streaming.
He’s at the bottom of the Crack of Doom. Just saved you a few hundred mill, Jackson.
He’s hanging out in the lava alongside the second T-800 and, um, Joe?
The title presumably refers to Gandalf and Aragorn hunting down Gollum in order to figure out where the Ring came from, which is a minor subplot in the book that the films more or less omitted. For the record, they left Gollum as prisoner of the Wood Elves, but a bunch of orcs showed up one night and by the time they were repelled Gollum was gone without a trace. And bringing this news was why Legolas was in the Council of Elrond in the first place.
I was at the bottom of your mom’s crack of doom last night
With video game movies being all the rage I assume this is an adaptation of the recent Lord of the Rings: Gollum by Daedalic Entertainment.
Indeed, tjhey might as well just call it Lord of the Rings: Flogging Gollum for all he’s worth.
Amazon also has the exclusive rights to the Appendicesyes folks, this is the state of pop culture in 2024.
To be fair, Tolkein’s appendices are longer than most author’s entire body of work.
I mean better the appendix then the colon
I have exclusive rights to his gall bladder.
Mmm, Tolkien steak and kidney pie…
The one thing Ring of Power did well compared to the Lord of the Rings films is establish the orcs as a credible threat rather than just red shirts waiting to be stabbed by untrained hobbits half their size.That scene in ROP where the orcs entered the village was legitimately tense and scary.
Nah.
Fuck off… yes it was
AND really gave them dimension and a culture!
“Lord of the Rings is one of the most successful and revered franchises in history and presents a significant opportunity for our theatrical business,” You know part of the reason its revered is because it was one trilogy and done, right idiot execs. When they tried to milk it for more we got awful “The Hobbit” movies that have society has collectively chosen to memory hole.
Let’s also add the build-up, planning, care, research, dedication to building actual living sets and costumes off brilliantly written source material also ensured those movies were as spectacularly executed and recieved as they were.As opposed to, “Here is some scribble that Tolkein left behind a bookshelf” lets slap a script into AI and CGI some Middle Earth and away we go!”
Plus a cast that not only did their best work, but practically formed their own Fellowship and rave about their time on set to this day.
Interesting, there is a fan film from 2009 with the same title.
This sounds like a terrible idea — spinning a side quest into a full movie. And there’s already a fan film that covered this territory. They made a meal out of the Hobbit, I don’t think anybody was begging for a Gollum game and they made that (and it sucked), just seems like more of going in the wrong direction. There’s no real stakes for a story taking place between the two trilogies, tell some other story in the world. Rings of Power has the right idea at least.
too much of a good thing
The title feels off. Like it doesn’t belong with ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, ‘The Two Towers’, ‘The Return of the King’. (How could it fit with Tolkein’s original titles anyway?)‘Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’. It reminds me of ‘A Kid in King Arthur’s Court’. The staggered, clumpy rhythm, the vaguely juvenile wrongness of it.
It’s too similar to The Search for Spock. That’s all I can hear, in Generic Trailer Narrator Voice.
Also, when was Gollum “lost” in a way that anybody would hunt him? The only opportunity for a prequel would be right after he finds the One Ring and murders his friend, they could maybe do a manhunt movie about the Hobbit-sheriff and the villagers hunting suspected murderer Smeagol. Everything else is covered by the Hobbit and LOTR movies. If they were really stupid they could say Gollum possessed some kind of fire-proofing magic charm that protected him from the lava, but. . . why? The ring was definitely destroyed, so why would anyone care if Gollum actually escaped Mount Doom?
I mean, early on in Fellowship (the movie), Gandalf does say “I searched everywhere for the creature Gollum, but the enemy found him first.” So… I dunno, Gandalf in a race vs. the Nazgul? Though given Ian McKellan’s age, maybe Serkis will have to mo-cap Gandalf.
“What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every hobbit-hole, vegetable farm, barrow, haystack, tavern and blackberry bush in that area.”
“There’s no way Gollum survived falling into Mount Doom!”“That’ll make him easier to catch!”
The Hunts for Tasty Fishes. One ping only, Precious!
Feels like PJ just trying to get paid so he can self-fund his actual career as Beatles archivist.
The sad thing is Jackson has SO much money he could make modestly budgeted movies out of his own pocket for the rest of his life. He came up out of some pretty inventive lower budgeted movies so it would be second nature to him. Jackson could do nothing but passion projects for the rest of his life and release a film every few years and st the end of his career have a potentially formidable body of work unlike anyone else in film.
Hell, he could even stick to documentaries and fiddling around with movie technology and still have something to be proud of.And this is what he’s decided to do instead. I’m sure he’ll say-and perhaps with a measure of real sincerity-that he’s just trying to look after the Tolkien legacy but the reality it’s going to be cold, dead IP content.Tolkien famously tried to sabotage the filming of his work but in the end the ghouls still dug up his corpse with their greedy little claws and now they are skullfucking his corpse for all the world to see.
At least he looked somewhat dwarfish unlike Mini-Aragorn
Maybe Serkis is just really underwater with the mortgage on his house.
The Hunt for Diminishing Returns
Zaslav is just throwing shit at the wall here hoping anything will stick. He’s also about to lose rights to the NBA, which if you follow sports know that the NBA on TNT has been beloved since the late 80s. He’s making an all time disasterclass case for a media exec.
This is the worst news since Hitler invaded Poland
It’s funny how the rights to the LOTR stuff is divided. Obviously the trilogy is the more bankable IP, but it’s also a much more limited scope of time. Amazon has all sorts of time periods to play with, while Warners has to keep squeezing stories out of the edges and cracks of the Third Age. I feel like we’re only a couple movies away from Radagast: Journey into the Brown.
I got a “The Ent Movie” notification for this?
He fell into the volcano of Mount Doom. End of series.
This just in: The movie is set after The Return of the King, will be a screwball comedy featuring a bunch of hapless hunters who just can’t figure out why they can’t track Gollum down.
It needs a “GOLLUM SEASON! HOBBIT SEASON!” scene.
So this is not based on any written word from Tolkien, then, right? It’s essentially a screenplay from scratch with familiar characters and places only?All I can think of when something unnecessary like this is announced: Well, at least some people get employed for an indeterminate amount of time. I guess.LotR is getting dangerously close to falling into the Mt Doom of trying to artificially extend its relevance in pop culture. Or maybe it’s just fallen in. Outside the three original films, nothing else has seemed objectively good to me.
I’ve always been so enchanted by the story of JRR Tolkien, a humble professor who looked at the mythology of England and sought to create a significant opportunity for a theatrical business.
There’s a fan film from 2009 with the same (sub-)title and presumably more or less the same plot: Aragorn and friends tracking Gollum through the wilderness. It’s available on YouTube for now, but I expect WB are going to memory-hole it soon.I remember it being quite good, with impressive production values and design, and at 38 minutes it was about the right length for a pretty slim story. I’m already dreading the run-time of the studio version.