A new Lord of the Rings film is officially in the works, and it will feature some key personnel from both the original trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy. However, it won’t be original director Peter Jackson in the chair, but rather Gollum actor Andy Serkis.
The film will be titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and will have Jackson and his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens on board as producers. Serkis will direct and star in the film as the titular corrupted hobbit. According to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who revealed the movie in an earnings call on Thursday, May 9 (thanks, Variety), the film will “explore storylines yet to be told.” Given Gollum’s fate in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, this movie will likely be a prequel. The Hunt for Gollum is set to premiere in theaters in 2026.
This is the first of two upcoming films made in collaboration with Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens, and hopefully it’s good, because the character of Gollum could use a win right now. Last year, the former Hobbit starred in his own game from Daedalic Entertainment which Kotaku deemed one of the worst games of 2023. Jackson and Serkis’ return and involvement at a leadership level is promising, as Gollum has always been a favorite part of those original movies from the early aughts.
We don’t know a lot about future Lord of the Rings games just now. Embracer Group, which has its grubby hands on the franchise’s video game adaptations, recently rebranded the part of its business handling the IP to Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. In 2023, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said the company wanted to make LOTR “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world” by “exploiting” the IP. But given that company has been a complete shitshow of late, there’s no telling when we might see another Lord of the Rings game.
