This is a huge shocker, but last night during “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” there was a mega announcement concerning a new “The Lord of the Rings” film, as the host of the show, a noted super-fan that had a minor Lake-town cameo in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” is set to co-write a new hobbit-focused feature film titled “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past,” alongside his son Peter McGee (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” “The Righteous Gemstones”), and longtime franchise screenwriter/producer Philippa Boyens.
Peter Jackson was also on hand for the announcement, which you can watch below, as Stephen Colbert explains the project (a script has been in development for two years, impressive they’ve been able to keep things hush-hush) is taking cues from six chapters of “Fellowship of the Ring.”
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“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson during the film’s announcement overnight. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [‘The Fellowship of the Ring’] that ya’ll never developed into the first movie back in the day. It’s basically the chapter ‘Three Is Company‘ [Chapter III] through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs‘ [Chapter VIII]. And I thought, ‘Oh, 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 that you guys had already made?'”
That’s not it, as they even shared brief details on the next Middle-Earth film, set in the Fourth Age (taking place well after the events of “Return of the King“), that sees Sam, Mary, and Pippen years later retracing their epic adventure. While Sam’s canonical daughter, Elanor (Sean Astin‘s actual daughter, Alexandra Astin, played the young version of her in the trilogy), goes on a discovery mission of her own.
An official logline for Colbert’s new hobbit film was also shared by WB:
“Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”
“The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past” would be the first time Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have attempted a project set outside The Third Age (excluding prologue sequences in “Fellowship of the Ring” from the Second Age), and could help flesh out a whole new wave of characters to re-energize the film franchise beyond “The Hunt for Gollum” (Kate Winslet recently was cast and comes out in 2027) and the misfiring of their anime film “The War of the Rohirrim.”
Unless there is some major recasting, we’d have to assume Astin would be back alongside Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan. Who they’ll be getting to play Elanor is more of a mystery, at the moment.
Oddly enough, I specifically talked up the idea of a Fourth Age/Elanor movie over the weekend on social media, and I got my wish in a way with this new Colbert project. So, we’re quite hopeful the film ends up getting in front of cameras, as everyone involved seems super enthusiastic about “Shadow of the Past.”
In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO
— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026
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