New Line Cinema Announces The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum

New Line Cinema is “now in the early stages of script development” for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, to be written by Philippa Boyens and Dame Frances Walsh, produced by Sir Peter Jackson and Ken Kamins (Jackson’s agent) and directed by Andrew Serkis, “alongside WETA and our film-making family in New Zealand.” This will be the first of two films in a deal between Jackson, Walsh and Boyens with New Line Cinema, and is expected in 2026, two years after the company’s (and Boyens’) upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.^[1]Alex Werpin, “Peter Jackson Working on New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Films for Warner Bros., Targeting 2026 Debut“, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 May 2024. Wesley Yin-Poole, “New The Lord … Continue reading

Several of the expected collaborators on this project – Weta Workshop and WetaFX, most notably – had also worked on Season One of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, with WetaFX also working on Season Two, and Workshop on The War of the Rohirrim and Tales of the Shire. New Line co-CEO Michael De Luca was one of the executives spearheading The Lord of the Rings trilogy in his day. Its unlikely that Jackson and New Line will have access to – nor use for – any ideas drummed up for an Aragorn show early on in development for the Amazon show. Indeed, New Line seeks to “stop Amazon blurring the lines” between their films and the show, a quest made the easier by Amazon’s move to the UK.^[2]James Hibberd, “‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon, Warner Bros. Ready for Tolkien Battle,” The Hollywood Reporter, 28 February 203.

Rather, the film is going to rely on perliminary work Jackson had done in the direction of this film. Already in 1998, Jackson mused about filming additional material to cover precisely this material: “One idea I’ve got (if the trilogy is successful) would be to gather the cast together again and shoot another couple of hours worth of scenes to flesh out The Lord of the Rings as a more complete “Special Edition”. In other words, we would write and shoot the Tom Bombadil stuff, or scenes involving Gandalf and Aragorn hunting Gollum, and his capture by Orcs … and any number of other bits of business that we can’t fit into the 6 hour version. That would be a really cool way of creating a ‘sequel.'”^[3]Eric Vespe, “20 QUESTIONS WITH PETER JACKSON – PART 2,” Ain’t It Cool News, 30 December 1998. By 2002, during post-production on The Two Towers, he had decided he would direct it alongside a then-one-film-strong version of The Hobbit,^[4]Will Harris, “INTERVIEW: Howard Shore (“The Lord of the Rings”),” Rhino, 27 April 2018. Xoanon, “Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh Talk THE HOBBIT,“ The One Ring net, 19 … Continue reading and entered development along with The Hobbit in 2006, but ultimately died out as The Hobbit proved to be a bigger undertaking than originally concieved.^[5]Guillermo del Toro, “Hola”. The One Ring net, 8 November 2008. Jackson’s deal with New Line entails another film, but its unclear whether this is to be another “part” of the backstory of Aragorn, or some other topic a-la the Angmar War.^[6]For a precis of possible topics, see u/Chen_Geller, “The Lord of the Rings: What stories CAN Warner Brothers tell going forward?“Reddit, 18 March 2023.

Its hard to know what to make of this enterprise at such an early stage. The fact that it reunites much of the crew (and presumably much of the same cast, probably with use of digital deaging, as Elrond had already been seen as Hugo Weaving at the time of both The Hobbit and The Last Alliance, and there’s reason to expect Arwen, Gandalf, Legolas and possibly Saruman) and is following up on ideas Jackson had already had and fleshed-out to some extent years prior, is reassuring. Certainly, there’s worthwhile dramatic material in Aragorn’s youth. All the same, with the advent of many such entries-between-the-entries a-la Rogue One, Solo and Obi-Wan in the Star Wars case (obviously that much more prolix than Serkis’ putative film), one is left thing how this might “flatten” the experience of The Lord of the Rings, as between The Hobbit and The Hunt for Gollum, new audiences will have visited virtually all of the locales of that story before even watching it. Certainly, the mystique of the figure sitting in the corner of the Prancing Pony (admittedly not played up in the film nearly as it is in the novel) will be lost.

All the same, the return to the New Line vision of Middle-earth is, to this author, a welcome change from the pretendquel approach taken by projects like The Rings of Power, and along with such projects as Rohirrim and the recent “Beyond the Door” project in Matamata, helps perpetuate Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth. We shall see! ^[7]u/Chen_Geller, “How Peter Jackson’s interpertation of Tolkien had perpetuated itself,” Reddit, 18 April 2024.