Stephen Colbert Is Writing a New Lord of the Rings Film, The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have confirmed today The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, which will be written by Philippa Boyens, Stephen Colbert, and Peter McGee.

Shadow of the Past, which the companies caveat is currently a working title, will be produced by Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based WingNut Films, in association with Stephen Colbert’s production company Spartina.

The announcement explains Shadow of the Past will be set 14 years after the passing of Frodo, and see “Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”

Jackson and Colbert go into some additional detail in a video conversation published alongside the announcement.

“The thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in The Fellowship [of the Ring] that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day,” Colbert tells Jackson. “It’s basically the chapter ‘Three is Company’ through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs.’ And then 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?’”

Colbert concedes that, after conceiving of the idea, it took him “a few years” to muster up the nerve to contact Jackson, but he ultimately did so a few years ago. Colbert explained that, since then, he and Jackson have been working with Philippa Boyens (co-writer of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series) on developing the story.

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