“The Hunt For Gollum” will have to wait a beat. “Lord of The Rings” fans aren’t starving for new projects with Amazon’s popular Second Age prequel series “The Rings of Power” heading into its third season (five seasons are expected before everything wraps up). We’ve also seen a renewed effort on the part of New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures to bring Middle-Earth back to the big screen with last year’s anime film “Lord of The Rings: The War of The Rohirrim” and two gestating live-action films, one focusing on Andy Serkis’ Gollum.
Sadly, fans will have to wait a little longer to see “The Hunt For Gollum” as Serkis, the film’s director and star, has revealed to The Direct that filming isn’t expected to begin until next year and that the release date has been pushed to December 2027 after a previous announced mentioned it being ready for audiences in December 2026.
“Yeah, it is not 2026. It was originally going to be December 2026. It is going to be December 2027…We are right at the beginning of the writing process. We will be prepping later this year. Prep takes a good chunk of time, six or seven months, and then we will be shooting next year. So, it backs into that December 2027 release date,” Serkis said of the disappointing news of delays while at Fan Expo Vancouver 2025.
We don’t know exactly what is behind these delays outside of Serkis mentioning they’re still in the writing stage after announcing a December 2026 release. But the studio’s priority of getting “The Batman” sequel in the can after an influx of production delays feels like a contributing factor to all of this. Given that Serkis plays Alfred Pennyworth in the new movies, there is an expectation he can’t be going off to New Zealand (an assumed locale as used in the previous six live-action movies) to shoot and star in a film for months when he’s needed back in London.
There were some indications that Ian McKellan and Orlando Bloom could be reprising their roles as Gandalf and Legolas. However, there is still a big question mark about the participation of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. His return would require quite a lot of VFX and makeup to de-age the 66-year-old (notably, in the realm of fantasy, there is a bit more leeway for elves and wizards) to seem like his younger self from those original movies given the events of “The Hunt For Gollum” are supposed to take place before Gollum links up with Frodo and Sam in their quest to reach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring.
Serkis taking on the reigns of director from Peter Jackson shouldn’t be too surprising given that he worked as a second unit director on “The Hobbit” trilogy, alongside helming films like “Mowgli: Legend of The Jungle,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” and most recently a version of “Animal Farm” that has taken years to come together.
When in December 2027 does the film drop? That remains to be seen, but given this reveal by Serkis, an official announcement from WB isn’t too far behind, as they’ll want to plant their flag on that date as soon as possible.
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