A new Lord of the Rings movie is officially in the works, and the creative team behind it is a fellowship you probably wouldn’t have picked.
Late-night host and vocal Tolkien fanatic Stephen Colbert is teaming up with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, alongside original trilogy masterminds Peter Jackson and screenwriter Philippa Boyens to bring a new story to Middle-earth for Warner Bros.
The announcement came on Tolkien Reading Day, with Jackson revealing his “very special partner” for the next film in a video call. That partner was none other than Colbert, a man whose love for J.R.R. Tolkien’s work is legendary. His knowledge runs so deep that he even snagged a cameo as a Lake-town spy in Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO
— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026
But this isn’t just a fanboy’s dream project; Colbert has zeroed in on a part of The Fellowship of the Ring that book purists have been whinging about for over two decades. The new film will adapt the six chapters that were cut from Jackson’s 2001 film, covering the hobbits’ perilous journey from Chapter III, ‘Three is Company’, through to Chapter VIII, ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’.
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“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert explained to Jackson in the announcement. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [The Fellowship of the Ring] that ya’ll never developed […] And I thought, ‘Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story.
“Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’”
According to Variety, Colbert developed the idea with his son before pitching it to Jackson. The team, which also includes original Lord of the Rings screenwriter Philippa Boyens, has secretly been developing a script for the past two years.
