{"id":564244,"date":"2026-03-25T22:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T22:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564244\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T22:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T22:13:09","slug":"stephen-colbert-announces-post-late-show-dream-gig-i-could-not-be-happier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564244\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Announces Post-‘Late Show’ Dream Gig: ‘I Could Not Be Happier’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLate Show<\/a>\u201d host Stephen Colbert<\/a> on Wednesday confirmed that dreams can indeed come true, revealing alongside \u201cLord of the Rings<\/a>\u201d director Peter Jackson<\/a> that he\u2019s been quietly working with him for years \u2014 and writing a brand-new installment for the beloved franchise.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019m pretty happy about it,\u201d Colbert told Jackson during their video call announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is arguably no other television personality with a more encyclopedic knowledge of the J.R.R. Tolkien<\/a> books than Colbert, as he has regularly proven<\/a> over the past 11 years on his \u201cLate Show\u201d during some genuinely impressive pop-quiz trivia segments<\/a> on the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,\u201d Colbert told Jackson. \u201cBut the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in \u2018The Fellowship\u2019 that y\u2019all never developed into the first movie back in the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colbert said he\u2019s writing the script with his son Peter McGee<\/a> and that the film will be based on material from the first book in Tolkien\u2019s series, \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring,\u201d specifically Chapter 3, \u201cThree Is Company,\u201d through Chapter 8, \u201cFog on the Barrow-Downs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, wait! Maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story,\u2019\u201d Colbert told Jackson. \u201cCould we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cI started talking it over with my son Peter, who\u2019s also a screenwriter, and we worked out what we thought would work, especially as a framing device for that story, and it took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call, but about two years ago, I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ColbertColbert in 2022, hosting a Comic-Con panel for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”<\/p>\n

Albert L. Ortega\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The film is tentatively titled \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past<\/a>\u201d but is still in early development \u2014 and a sequel to the upcoming \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,\u201d which will see Andy Serkis<\/a> reprise his role as the titular ring-obsessed creature.<\/p>\n

The news is certainly heartwarming for fans who\u2019ve known about Colbert\u2019s lifelong \u201cRings\u201d obsession<\/a>, and those who felt frustration after CBS canceled his show<\/a> following controversial pressure<\/a> from President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s FCC head, Brendan Carr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jackson cheekily asked his new partner Wednesday if he\u2019s sure he\u2019s got the time to work on this with him, only for the ousted \u201cLate Show\u201d host to quip that \u201cit turns out I\u2019m going to be free starting this summer\u201d \u2014 as his final \u201cLate Show\u201d episode airs May 21.<\/p>\n

Earlier in their chat, Colbert warmly recalled winning Jackson over with his idea and pitching it to executives at New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. He told the Oscar-winning director, \u201cI could not be happier to say that they loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colbert happily added before signing off, \u201cAnd so, that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to be working on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLate Show\u201d host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday confirmed that dreams can indeed come true, revealing alongside \u201cLord of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,20752,3869,6514,14620,427],"class_list":["post-564244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-peter-jackson","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564244","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=564244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}