Across decades in show business, Stephen Colbert has been many things. He has rotated across late-night TV stages, adopted a satirical alter ego and partnered with comedy’s biggest names.
Beginning this spring, when the studio lights dim for the last time on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,”the comedian will ride off into a different showtime sunset: the Shire.
In a video announcement with the “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson posted on Wednesday, Colbert revealed that he has been developing a new movie based on early chapters of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels that were largely omitted in Jackson’s original trilogy.
“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me, but the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in ‘The Fellowship’ that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day,” Colbert said in the video, referring to the first book in Tolkien’s trilogy. The announcement was published by Warner Bros.
The new project coincides with the final curtain for “The Late Show,” which CBS abruptly announced last summer it would cancel after the 2026 broadcast season, when Colbert’s contract expires.
Along with being a pillar of late-night TV, Colbert is perhaps one of Tolkien’s most dedicated and vocal fans. For decades, he has sprinkled “Lord of the Rings” analysis into guest interviews and spoken often about how the books guide his worldview.
“There are very few fictional works with that depth and background,” he said in a 2019 interview with The New York Times Magazine. He added that he had lost count of how many times he had read and reread the books.
The millennium-era version of the “Lord of the Rings” universe — built on Jackson’s trilogy of movies released in the early 2000s — has ballooned in recent years, with dozens of spinoffs, prequels, sequels and auxiliary content ranging from movies to streaming shows and even anime. A new movie in the franchise — “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum” — is set to be released in 2027.
But Colbert’s project, undertaken alongside Jackson, hews closely to the books, he said in the announcement. He said he has asked himself, “Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies?”
The project started years ago, Colbert said, when he talked over the idea with his son Peter, who works as a screenwriter. About two years ago, he got in touch with Jackson, he said, and the project took off.
“I did not think I would have the time” to write the movie, Colbert joked in the announcement video. “It turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer.”
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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