Stephen Colbert has lined up his next job after finishing up as host of The Late Show in May: writing a new Lord of the Rings film tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.<\/p>\n
Film-maker Peter Jackson<\/a>, who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, made the surprise announcement in a video on social media on Tuesday. Colbert is an avid, lifelong JRR Tolkien fan and even had a small cameo in Jackson\u2019s 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug alongside his wife and children.<\/p>\n Deadline reported<\/a> the film will be titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past and will be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee. Set 14 years after the passing of Frodo, the film will follow Sam, Merry, and Pippin as they set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile Sam\u2019s daughter, Elanor, discovers \u201ca long-buried secret that explains why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began\u201d.<\/p>\n In a video with Jackson, Colbert said he was inspired to develop a story after rereading The Fellowship of the Ring, and thinking about chapters three to eight, which were not included in Jackson\u2019s film adaptation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou 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 y\u2019all never developed into the first movie back in the day,\u201d Colbert told Jackson.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought, 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?\u201d<\/p>\n Colbert said he then planned an outline for the story with his son, the screenwriter Peter Colbert.<\/p>\n Allow Instagram content?<\/p>\n This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call, but about two years ago I did. You liked it enough to talk to me about it \u2026 and I could not be happier that [Warner Bros.] loved it,\u201d Colbert told Jackson.<\/p>\n Jackson joked that Colbert would have to find time to adapt the film, in reference to the highly contentious cancellation of CBS\u2019s The Late Show, which Colbert has hosted since 2015. The cancellation was criticised as politically motivated, coming just after Colbert criticised CBS\u2019s parent company, Paramount, for making a $16m settlement with Donald Trump,<\/a> who has been vocal about his dislike for Colbert.<\/p>\n In response, Colbert said: \u201cIt turns out I\u2019m going to be free starting this summer\u201d, to which Jackson replied: \u201cIsn\u2019t that fortunate?\u201d<\/p>\n The film will be produced by Jackson along with the franchise\u2019s longtime producers Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh.<\/p>\n Colbert\u2019s film is the second upcoming film in Tolkien\u2019s universe. Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is set to be released 17 December 2027, will be directed by Gollum himself \u2013 Andy Serkis \u2013 and will follow Aragorn on his quest to capture Gollum during the time period between The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, in order to keep the ring from Sauron.<\/p>\n The six Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies have grossed a combined US$5.9bn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert has lined up his next job after finishing up as host of The Late Show in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-562925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}