{"id":428113,"date":"2026-05-15T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T00:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/428113\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T00:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T00:01:10","slug":"stephen-colbert-began-writing-rings-film-a-year-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/428113\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert began writing Rings film a year ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world is changing. We can feel it in the water. We can feel it in the earth. We can smell in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live to remember 22 years ago when we thought we were through with Lord Of The Rings films. It began with three Rings movies, then three Hobbit movies, and some things that should not have been forgotten, like the quality of those Hobbit movies, were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth, and in 2024, Warner Bros. announced the development of even more Lord Of The Rings movies from Peter Jackson. The result of that deal was two upcoming movies: A prequel, The Hunt For Gollum, set between The Hobbit and Fellowship Of The Ring, from Animal Farm director Andy Serkis; and a sequel, Shadow Of The Past, a sequel set years after Return Of The King, co-written by Stephen Colbert<\/a>. There\u2019s no doubt that Colbert is one of Hollywood\u2019s foremost Tolkien experts and has established a relationship with Jackson via cameos in The Hobbits. Per Variety<\/a>, it was Colbert who leveraged that relationship to pitch the sequel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Cannes, where he received an honorary Palme d\u2019Or for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Jackson told Variety that Colbert suggested the sequel well before he lost his job at The Late Show. According to Jackson, Colbert \u201cphoned me up a year ago\u201d and said, \u201cI\u2019ve got an idea for a Tolkien movie based on the books that I think would be really good.\u201d That idea is a legacy sequel focused on Sam, Merry, and Pippin\u2019s kids, who, in retracing their dads\u2019 big, hairy footprints, end up in the Barrow-downs. Colbert has since worked on the script with Rings and Hobbit screenwriter Philippa Boyens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jackson says having the project was good for Colbert after the abrupt and controversial end to his tenure at CBS, which Jackson calls \u201cshocking\u201d and not what Colbert or the show deserved. \u201cSo it was like, okay, one day he\u2019s going to be a late-night talk show host,\u201d Jackson said, \u201cand the next day he\u2019s going to be a Tolkien scriptwriter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world is changing. We can feel it in the water. We can feel it in the earth.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-428113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}