The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, my favorite film property, is slowly morphing into yet another cursèd cinematic universe that will haunt me with new installments of diminishing quality until the day I die. I mean, seriously, who in Galadriel’s name actually wants a whole new set of movies built around Gollum?!
The tragic news hit Middle Earth on Thursday: According to Variety, Warner Bros.—which is apparently intent on milking this beloved franchise until it is drier than Frodo’s skin at the end of Return of the King—is now working on a new batch of films built around Andy Serkis’s shifty-eyed character. The first is set to premiere in 2026. In the words of Smeagol himself, “AAAAGH! … You ruins it!”
The working title for the first of these films is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is actually pretty funny because a 2009 fan film already adapted this book lore with the exact same title. (Gollum was also the subject of a terrible video game last year, so it seems we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.) Serkis will both direct and star, according to Variety, and he’ll also executive produce alongside Ken Kamins and The Imaginarium’s Jonathan Cavendish.
No offense to any of these guys, but I simply cannot fathom who is craving more LOTR content after six movies and a seriously expensive flop of a TV series. (Remember how Amazon reportedly spent $ 715 million on its 2022 Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power, only for it to fall flat on its elven face? Why are we still doing this?!)
In a Thursday earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery and industry Sauron David Zaslav reportedly assured everyone that Peter Jackson and his fellow original trilogy masterminds Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens “will be involved every step of the way” for these new films. Then again, Jackson also directed the Hobbit prequels of the 2010s, and frankly, the only aspect of those films that I continue to value is Lee Pace’s excellently committed performance as Thranduil the Elvenking. Sorry, not sorry!
As absurd as this news feels, we’ve known it was coming for a while; Warner Bros. first announced its intention to create more films inspired by J.R.R. Tolkein’s work last February. In this IP-driven era of Hollywood, pretty much every major franchise gets the cinematic universe treatment, from Star Wars to Harry Potter (the latter of which has its own series adaptation on the way from Warners as we speak). All of this to say, this is par for the course.
Still, as someone who used to love Star Wars and can now barely muster the energy to watch the newest entries in a seemingly endless stream of Lucasfilm series, and who still watches the original Lord of the Rings trilogy every Thanksgiving, the news of these new Gollum movies (Gollum movies!?!) has me feeling more exhausted than ever. Must we Marvel-ize the Shire? And what’s next—a limited series about the ents? A prequel series detailing the creation of the Uruk-hai? Let me just stop now before some Warner exec gets any ideas…
All of this to say, as frustrating as this development might be, it’s also, sadly, par for the course. That said, if anyone is assembling a fellowship of nine intrepid LOTR fans to march on Zaslav’s office—and the offices of uninspired film executives everywhere—feel free to shoot me an email.
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