Elijah Wood Says Frodo Will “Certainly in Theory” Return for Stephen Colbert’s Lord of the Rings Film. Fans Aren’t Sold Yet.
Elijah Wood gave an interview this week while promoting his animated show Among Us, and The Direct asked him about his IMDb listing as part of The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past — the new film Warner Bros. has in development with Stephen Colbert co-writing. Wood’s answer was careful and inconclusive.
“Okay. Well, it hasn’t.. We’re not there yet… But listen, I think the implication is that the stories that Stephen wants to tell, which are the six chapters that were not committed to film in Fellowship of the Ring, largely because they would have slowed the process of the journey down, because when he leaves Bag End and the Shire, and he has to get to Bree, if it had gone the meandering way that it does in the books, it just would have taken a long time to get to Bree, and… it would have killed momentum.”
Jackson made that call correctly. Tolkien’s journey from Bag End to Bree includes the encounter with Gildor and the wandering Elves, a terrifying night at the Barrow-downs where the hobbits are captured by a Barrow-wight, and the chapters involving Tom Bombadil, the ancient singing figure who predates the naming of the world and cannot be corrupted by the Ring. Jackson dropped him entirely. Fans have argued about that decision for twenty-five years.
Wood continued: “But I think the idea of telling the story of what happens in those six chapters is really exciting, and I think really exciting for fans, and I think what Stephen and his son have crafted and what they’re working through is really rich and interesting, and it certainly includes all those characters. So, a script has to be written, we have to go through a process and read it, and it has to get a green light and all those things, but certainly in theory, yeah. And I’m beyond thrilled that it’s Stephen and his son doing it. It’s in the best Tolkien scholarly hands.”
Calling Stephen Colbert “the best Tolkien scholarly hands” is laughable. But the project’s framing is where things get complicated. Shadows of the Past is set 14 years after Frodo’s passing. Sam, Merry, and Pippin retrace the first steps of their journey while Sam’s daughter Elanor discovers a long-buried secret about how close the War of the Ring came to being lost before it began.
The chapters Colbert wants to film would work outside of this because they resist that kind of dramatic retrofitting. The Old Forest is menacing without explanation. Tom Bombadil sings in dactylic rhythm and resists all critical interpretation. Tolkien himself said he deliberately made Bombadil an enigma, a reminder that some things in the world exist outside the War of the Ring entirely. The Barrow-downs is a ghost story set in an ancient burial ground where the hobbits nearly dissolve into a forgotten evil. These chapters work because Tolkien wrote them unhurried, weird, rooted in Old English and Norse myth. Delivering them through a framing device where Elanor discovers buried secrets fourteen years after her father’s death asks them to function as backstory. They were never backstory.
Tom Bombadil in a thirty-minute extended sequence inserted between Bag End and Bree would be extraordinary. What he becomes inside a sequel about Elanor uncovering conspiracy is a different question with no obvious answer.
When Colbert announced the project in March, fans were not generous. One wrote: “There are bad ideas. And then there is whatever this is. Writing a sequel to ROTK is INSANE. Absolutely insane.” Reddit user PhysicsEagle noted: “Has Colbert ever written anything aside from television sketches? Also, how in the world are they turning Fog on the Barrow-Downs into a feature-length film? We thought Hunt for Gollum was reaching for scraps.” Another fan posted: “So it’s going to be War of the Rohirrim all over again. You could do all kinds of stories from the appendix, and do them accurately. One that I’ve said would be really suitable for adaptation would be Balin’s failed expedition to Moria. But nah. Let’s just turn Sam’s daughter…”
Cinema Tweets asked: “Why is Stephen Colbert given the responsibility to write a new Lord of the Rings film? What am I missing — how is this happening? I have no opinion about Colbert on a personal level, I’m neutral, but what qualifies him to write this? Because he’s a massive LOTR fan? That’s it?”
Colbert was asked that exact question by The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, there’s no reason to,” he said when asked why fans should trust him. “And there’s no value in me addressing that because all you can do as — I’ll use a loaded term here — an artist is follow your heart and the craft that you have learned to try to turn this into something that is not fandom but drama. And, luckily, I don’t have to do this alone. I have a great Sherpa in Philippa Boyens, who cares about it in the same way I do. And I will just say that every moment has been a joy so far.”
Boyens co-wrote all six Jackson films, but in recent years she’s caused errors with The War of the Rohirrim and what looks to be a big leap in The Hunt for Gollum.
The script has not been written. No green light exists for this film as of yet. Wood’s “certainly in theory” is doing considerable work. If the Elanor framing device places Frodo only in flashbacks or memory, Wood’s qualifier becomes even more accurate than it sounds on first read.
Do you trust Stephen Colbert to handle this?
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