Stephen Colbert doesn’t have to worry about his next gig after he signs off as host on CBS’s The Late Show on May 21. The late-night show cost will be embarking on what is arguably a dream project for him: adapting the next Lord of the Rings movie from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures.
The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens, and Peter McGee, and will join forces with Sir Peter Jackson, Dame Fran Walsh and Boyens.
Colbert revealed that the film will be based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, where Hobbits are trapped by a Barrow-wight in an unnatural fog.
This is the second Lord of the Rings movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s appendices. The next one is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis and adapted by Walsh, Boyens, Arty Papageorgiou and Phoebe Gittins. The movie is due out on Dec. 17, 2027.
The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set 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.
“You 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’all never developed into the first movie back in the day,” Colbert said in a video with Peter Jackson announcing the project.
The late-night talk show host pondered if they would “make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies” that had already been made.
Colbert has long been known as an obsessed Lord of the Rings fan, even hosting panels at Comic-Con for both the Amazon series and 2014’s The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.
Jackson joked with Colbert about finding the time to adapt the film, to which the Late Show host joked, “It turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer.” Colbert said that if he were still hosting the late-night show, he couldn’t have adapted the book at the same time he hosted the CBS show.
Altogether, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series, across six movies, have grossed over $5.9 billion worldwide.