US talk show host Stephen Colbert is teaming up with The Lord Of The Rings franchise architects Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens on The Lord Of The Rings: Shadow Of The Past.
Colbert will co-write the film (working title) alongside Boyens and Peter McGee, Warner Bros and New Line confirmed on Wednesday. WingNut Films is producing in association with Spartina Industries.
The action takes place 14 years after the death of Frodo as Sam, Merry, and Pippin retrace the first steps of their adventure. Sam’s daughter Elanor finds a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was nearly lost before it even began.
The film will be based on six chapters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s first book, The Fellowship Of The Ring, spanning Three Is Company to Fog On The Barrow-Downs. Those passages were not included in the first film.
Shadow Of The Past will be the second of two LOTR universe films. The first, The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum, is in production with Andy Serkis directing and starring and is scheduled to open in December 2027.
Colbert, a lifelong Tolkien fan, hosts the award-winning The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which Paramount-owned CBS is closing down in May ostensibly due to financial decisions. Colbert has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, with whom Paramount CEO David Ellison has close ties, and said the decision by CBS to settle a Trump lawsuit in 2025 was “a big fat bribe”.
McGee has worked on Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Outer Banks, The Righteous Gemstones, Blue Bloods, and Tooning Out the News.
Longtime Jackson and Walsh collaborator Boyens co-wrote the original trilogy for the big screen and shared the adapted screenplay Oscar for The Return Of The King in 2004. She was a producer and story consultant on the 2024 anime feature The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim and is producing and co-writing The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
The six LOTR films and The Hobbit have collectively earned close to $6bn at the global box office.
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