NEWS: Hunt for Gollum characters hinted

Fans of adaptations of Tolkien’s work are eating well. The news from Rings of Power is trickling in, Tales of the Shire is charming hearts with its cozy recreation of life in Bywater (PPP Plays, NotR), and even Paul Corfield Godfrey’s operatic adaptation of Lord of the Rings (authorised by the Tolkien Estate directly!) is releasing shortly.

But perhaps the most tantalising of the upcoming projects is The Hunt for Gollum, to be directed by Gollum himself—I mean, Andy Serkis. One presumes that it will be in continuity with the six Peter Jackson films, but little is known about content of the film, aside from it covering something only mentioned in passing in Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, in half a line of dialogue:

“I looked everywhere for the creature Gollum, but the enemy found him first.”
—Gandalf

And, yes, Ian McKellen has now let slip a little more news about the movie, at a recent event:

… it’s going to start filming in May. [….] And I’ll tell you two secrets about casting. There’s a character in the movie called Frodo. And there’s another character called Gandalf.
—Ian McKellen https://www.tiktok.com/@gronkcosplay/video/7539599501254839574

The source material

Like The Rings of Power, the source material for the hunt for Gollum is dispersed through the main story of The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices; the action and dialogue will be largely invented by the script writers, reported to be Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (who worked on the LotR and Hobbit films, obviously), and Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou (who worked on The War of the Rohirrim). We have recently heard that the draft of this script is finished, and it was talked up by Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav (you can watch FoF discussion of this on a recent live-stream).

Going only from what Tolkien wrote, we know that Aragorn was involved as well as Gandalf, and that Gollum ended up being taken to the Mirkwood Elves. This part of the story as well as what happened next was not covered in the Jackson film (the reason Legolas was at Rivendell was not the one from the book!), but perhaps it’s just conveniently off-screen. It was not a given that even Gandalf would feature in the upcoming film: in principle it could have largely covered Aragorn’s mission in the wild, finding and then travelling with Gollum. However, the 2009 fan film also called The Hunt for Gollum had both Aragorn and Gandalf feature, and certainly Ian McKellen seems to have been keen for a while to reprise his role in cinematic Middle-earth.

A Gandalf/Frodo frame story?

Obviously Frodo is nowhere in the whole Gollum-hunt arc in the book, but then he isn’t in The Hobbit either…and yet appears in the frame story with Ian Holm in An Unexpected Journey. So in principle they could be writing a frame story around Gandalf telling Frodo about the hunt, more in line with Tolkien’s text:

‘[…] Making out Gollum’s part, and fitting it into the gap in the history, required some thought. I may have started with guesses about Gollum, but I am not guessing now. I know. I have seen him.’
‘You have seen Gollum?’ exclaimed Frodo in amazement.
‘Yes. The obvious thing to do, of course, if one could. I tried long ago; but I have managed it at last.
—’The Shadow of the Past’, Fellowship of the Ring

This doesn’t fit in with the film, which moves the plot on quickly. But the book, after some discussion, arrives at introducing Aragorn:

…my search would have been in vain, but for the help that I had from a friend: Aragorn, the greatest traveller and huntsman of this age of the world. Together we sought for Gollum down the whole length of Wilderland, without hope, and without success. But at last, when I had given up the chase and turned to other paths, Gollum was found. My friend returned out of great perils bringing the miserable creature with him.
—’The Shadow of the Past’

The details of what Aragorn did is not here (it is recounted in the later chapter ‘The Council of Elrond’), but we do get this detail:

[Gollum] had made his slow, sneaking way, step by step, mile by mile, south, down at last to the Land of Mordor.
—’The Shadow of the Past’

As a piece of trivia, if the upcoming adaptation includes this part of the story, then it will fulfill an idea mentioned by Peter Jackson way back in 2006:

You could even get into Gollum’s sneaking into Mordor and Aragorn protecting The Shire.
—Peter Jackson (speaking about the preproduction of The Hobbit films) Ain’t it Cool News

Other possibilities include a frame story set in Rivendell at the time of the Council of Elrond, though Hugo Weaving is said to not be interested in reprising his role as Elrond, or even later, in Minas Tirith after the victory over Sauron. The latter would be in line with Tolkien’s ‘The Quest of Erebor‘, a section cut from the Appendices (and published in Unfinished Tales), that has Gandalf talking with Frodo, Pippin, Merry and Gimli at this time, and giving his own perspective on the events in The Hobbit. This would remove the need to avoid showing Elrond, and one could have just Gandalf talking to Frodo (maybe with other Hobbit cameos) and have King Elessar, aka Aragorn, pop in to say hello, and tell of what he did on his own in the titular hunt.

In a cinematic adaptation one could have just Frodo talking with Gandalf, in a relatively sedate setting in Minas Tirith. After all, McKellen will be 87 at time of filming, nearly as old as Christopher Lee was when he filmed his scenes for the Hobbit trilogy, with a body double filling in for scenes that needed to be shot in New Zealand. Aside from general “hunting in the wild” scenes with Aragorn (they “explored the whole length of Wilderland, down even to the Mountains of Shadow and the fences of Mordor”), Gandalf’s interactions with Gollum in the book are in an interrogatory mode in Mirkwood.

Production timeline

The other bit of info McKellen mentioned in that clip is that filming is “going to start in May” [2026]. So if we have a completed (draft) script now, then there’s a fair run-up on the rest of the preproduction. The release date is currently set for December 2027, so from the start of filming that’s about 19 months of production. For comparison, principal photography of the Lord of the Rings films was a touch over 14 months, and for the Hobbit films a bit under 9 months (which recall, were only meant to be two films at the time).

Each LotR film had about a year of post-production, but they are much grander in scope: Peter Jackson mentioned at the War of the Rohirrim premiere that Hunt for Gollum will be a “psychological thriller”, and that it won’t be just more of what he did with the other films. Obviously the films will need extensive if small-scale VFX to render the performance capture of Andy Serkis as Gollum, but (presumably!) no extensive battles will need to be made.

We await further news with interest.