Stephen Colbert’s next move after CBS? Writing a Lord of the Rings film

Late night TV and Middle Earth just might be the crossover you didn’t know you needed.

News of a new film set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved world is plenty of cause to celebrate for Lord of the Rings fans, but the latest project comes with a wild twist. Stephen Colbert and LOTR trilogy director Peter Jackson just announced that The Late Show host will co-write a brand new film adapting Tolkien’s timeless tales of elves, hobbits, and difficult choices: The Lord Of The Rings: Shadow Of The Past.

Colbert, a self-proclaimed LOTR superfan, will jump headlong to the project after wrapping up a more than a decade-long run as the host of The Late Show. CBS announced that it would cancel his show last year, a decision conspicuously timed with Colbert’s criticism of parent company Paramount’s $16 million settlement with the Trump administration over a 60 Minutes interview. Regulatory concerns over the merger between Paramount and Skydance also loomed large in CBS’s decision to unceremoniously end Colbert’s long Late Show run, though the network claimed the decision was not related to the show’s performance or broader concerns at Paramount.

Shadow Of The Past

The late night TV loss is Hollywood’s gain. Colbert came up with the LOTR pitch with his son, a screenwriter, and connected with Jackson over his idea for a narrative that would bring to life some early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that didn’t make their way into the canonical film trilogy.

“… 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 told Jackson in the announcement video. “It’s basically the chapter ‘Three Is Company’ through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs.’ And 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?’”

Fans of the trilogy will no doubt be pleased to learn that Tom Bombadil will finally get his due. Those chapters cover some of the most mysterious bits of the saga, when the group of hobbits encounters a mystical being known as Tom Bombadil, who rescues them from a mishap in a labyrinthine area known as the Barrow-Downs. Bombadil is a mystical character who speaks in riddles and appears uniquely immune to the dark pull of the ring. Because that chunk of source material is so whimsical compared to much of the fellowship’s later slog, it’s easy to see how Colbert’s wit could bring the story to life . 

The many tales of Middle Earth

The realm of Middle-earth is rife for more storytelling. While the original three films covered a lot of ground, even their extended edition rushes through plenty of rich source material from the books. Shadow Of The Past is a unique opportunity to explore some interesting corners of the original trilogy – but it isn’t the only one in the works.

The next Lord of the Rings film, The Hunt for Gollum, is scheduled for a late 2027 release date and will follow Aragorn’s quest to track Gollum after he comes into possession of the One Ring. That project is helmed by Andy Serkis, the actor who famously played Gollum and has proven his versatility over the years, including a lauded performance in the anti-fascist parable Andor, a show set in the Star Wars universe.

Amazon launched its own made-for-TV exploration of Tolkien’s world with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which premiered on Prime Video in 2022. The series is visually lush but a bit uneven, delving into events that took place thousands of years before the trilogy, largely drawing on appendices and more obscure lore referenced in the series. While Tolkien fans universally laud Peter Jackson’s loyal adaptations, The Rings of Power incorporates a few familiar faces, but largely tells new stories with some invented plots and characters – a controversial approach but a necessary one to bring more tales from Middle Earth to the screen. A third season of the series is in the works now, with a likely release in 2027.