🎬 New LOTR Movie "The Hunt for Gollum" Coming in 2026

Andy Serkis will Direct, Peter Jackson will produce, and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will both produce and write the script

Credit New Line Cinema

Over a year ago word broke that Warner Bros. was putting new The Lord of the Rings movies into development. Though some feared that meant a reboot of the story, it seemed the approach would instead be to adapt untold stories in the upcoming films.

Following the news, I wrote a newsletter where I gave some suggestions of potential stories that would make for interesting movies in a newsletter.

Yesterday we got our confirmation that this exploration of “untold tales” will indeed be the approach, with the news that the first new Lord of the Rings movie will be directed by and star Andy Serkis and has a working title of “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.” Serkis shared the news with a selfie of himself and Gollum on Instagram captioned “We is baaaaak, Precious!”

andyserkis

A post shared by @andyserkis

Returning to Middle-earth along with Serkis are Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, three of the main architects of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.

This is no surprise, as Warner Bros. has signaled its desire to have them involved from the moment these movies were still announced.

This is all potentially exciting news! More Lord of the Rings movies are coming to theaters and the names attached to the project inspire a certain level of trust and excitement.

But I’m also a bit wary initially.

In another newsletter last June about Jackson’s potential involvement in future movies, I wrote the following:

Tolkien observes in Letter #131 that

“They [the elves] thus became obsessed with ‘fading’, the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the sun) was perceived by them. They became sad, and their art (shall we say) antiquarian, and they efforts all really a kind of embalming —even though they also retained the old motive of their kind, the adornment of earth, and the healing of its hurts.”

While I am happy to see more movies and television adaptations of Tolkien’s works, I fear we are on the road to a level of obsession with ‘fading’ and ‘embalming’ by letting one interpretation of Tolkien’s works so dominate our imagination to the exclusion of others.

I love Peter Jackson and his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but let’s let someone else have a turn to bring these amazing stories and world to life in a style and vision that is unique to them and not limited to what’s come before. Let's see some new visual styles and influences and interpretations! Let's not get stuck trying to recreate what was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy instead of producing fresh new versions of the stories we all love so well. Let’s follow the road ahead, not only gaze longingly back to where we’ve been.

I suppose I’m getting a bit of what I hoped for with Andy Serkis in the director’s chair and a new story being told. But the whole prospect of turning Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth into a franchise still feels more like being obsessed with “fading” and preserving or extending the glories of the past than I’d prefer: it’s the Marvelification of Middle-earth.

The franchise approach is not the only cause for concern. The hunt for Gollum does not have much in the way of source material to go off of for a story. We know the broad strokes of what happened during Gandalf and Aragorn’s search for Gollum from details from within the story of The Lord of the Rings (such as “The Council of Elrond” chapter), the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and from outside sources like Unfinished Tales. Warner brothers has the rights to the details that come from within LoTR but not anything outside it like Unfinished Tales.

But these broad strokes are outlines at best. Any film adaptation will need to add and invent details to flesh out the story. And we need look no further than The Hobbit trilogy by Jackson and Warner Bros. to illustrate the risks of adding material to Tolkien’s stories.

Finally, this story of the hunt for Gollum will involve Gandalf and Aragorn. As much as I love and treasure Viggo Mortensen and Sir Ian McKellen’s respective iconic performances, I am hoping that they are not involved in a major way. This is doubly true if there is any sort of de-aging technology employed! Recast the characters instead!

Now please don’t misinterpret my concerns as a lack of excitement! I remain cautiously optimistic and will wait to pronounce judgement until I’ve seen the finished film. Jackson and company will have more pre-production time than they had on The Hobbit, for instance! And there is a potentially interesting story to tell here.

But though I’m cautiously optimistic, I’m also prepared for the worst with these new Warner Bros. films. Will they work? Could they ever reach the heights that the original trilogy did? Will they even be decent?

I hope so! And however they turn out, it will at least be another adventure to take in Middle-earth. That itself is worth celebrating and waiting for with excitement.

For Discussion: What say you?

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