Peter Jackson is going back to Middle Earth.
Jackson, the director of both the three film adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, is currently in “the early stages of script development” on a new Middle Earth film for Warner Brothers. This was announced by Warners studio head David Zaslav during a quarterly earnings call this morning. A press release from Warner Brothers further clarified the announcement, stating that the film is tentatively titled The Hunt For Gollum and is slated to have Andy Serkis, the mo-cap actor who played the character across Jackson’s six Middle Earth films, directing as well as reprising the character again. Jackson will serve as producer.
The studio is targeting a 2026 release date for the project and Zaslav confirmed that Jackson’s writing/producing partners on Lord Of The Rings/The Hobbit – Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens – “will be involved every step of the way.”
Based on information within Tolkien’s writings, The Hunt For Gollum should take place between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings and concentrate on the search to find Gollum after he fled his Misty Mountains home to find the hobbit that “stole” his Precious ring. Although not confirmed for the film, Tolkien’s writings suggest that some Lord Of The Rings characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond, Legolas and others could conceivably appear in this film.
In the press release, Jackson, Walsh and Bowens state –
It is an honour and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker — Gollum! As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!
Currently, Warner Brothers has the animated The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim slated for a release this December. The film will tell the story of Helm Hammerhand, a king of Rohan some two and a half centuries before the events of Lord Of The Rings. Boyens, a Tolkien scholar even before she joined with Jackson and Walsh on the original Lord Of The Rings films, is a producer on this project. The studio is also developing other Tolkien-based projects whose details are very much under wraps.
Meanwhile, Amazon continues to work on bringing the second season of their live action series The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, which focuses on events thousands of years before The Lord Of The Rings, to their streaming service sometime later this year.
Via The Hollywood Reporter and Variety
