Peter Jackson has confirmed that The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, the film Stephen Colbert is co-writing, is still in development after reports that the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. had paused it. Jackson spoke at the Sitges Film Festival while accepting its Honorary Grand Prize and said: “We have The Shadow of the Past, which is in the scriptwriting stage.”
He gave an update on the other Middle-earth film as well: “The Hunt for Gollum is almost finished filming. I think there are about two weeks of shooting left. And we’ve also already written the script for Tintin 2, the second Tintin film. That will be the next film I make.” The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis, opens December 17, 2027.
That is the whole of the confirmation. Shadow of the Past has no release date and no filming schedule, and “still happening” means it is still a script.
Where the Cancellation Rumors Came From
A report on October 4 said that Skydance, the newly merged owner of Warner Bros. and Paramount, had put the film on pause. The report said the studio wanted to see how The Hunt for Gollum performs before committing to another live-action Middle-earth movie, and noted that Colbert was still working on drafts. Warner Bros. said the project had not been canceled, and a film writer posted on X the next day: “Confirmed not accurate.”
The rumor spread because of what happened to Colbert. CBS announced the end of The Late Show last year, days after Colbert publicly criticized Paramount, CBS’s parent, for paying $16 million to settle President Trump’s lawsuit over an edited interview with Kamala Harris. The final episode aired May 21, 2026, and Paramount’s nearly $111 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery produced the merged studio. Some fans connected Colbert’s firing to the pause, and nothing in the reporting establishes that link.
Who Is Writing It and What It Is About
Warner Bros. and New Line announced the film on March 25. Colbert is writing it with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote Jackson’s original trilogy and the Hobbit films. Colbert told Jackson in the announcement video: “It took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call, but about two years ago I did.”
The studio’s synopsis reads: “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo – 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.”
One strand covers six early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, “Three Is Company” through “Fog on the Barrow-Downs,” which Jackson did not film. Those chapters include Tom Bombadil. The other strand, the hobbits traveling fourteen years after Frodo leaves, is new. Colbert described the goal this way: “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?”
Why Fans Are Wary
The reaction has been hostile since March. Fans wrote: “Lord of the Rings has no sequel. Lord of the Rings needs no sequel.” Another asked, “Who asked for this?” A third said, “I personally I don’t think we should be green-lighting fanfiction and attaching it to the original series.” Colbert told an interviewer in May that he does not see value in trying to convince skeptics online.
The franchise’s recent record gives them reason. The Amazon series The Rings of Power drew a tepid response, and the anime film The War of the Rohirrim struggled at the box office. Season 3 of the series is expected November 11.
This project should be canceled. Half of it is an invented story that Tolkien never wrote, with a new character at the center, and Colbert said at the announcement that he could finally take it on because his show was ending. The pause was denied, and the film is still in the script stage.
What Does Middle-earth Gain?
Tolkien finished the story he meant to tell and Jackson filmed the version most fans love. If the best case for another film is that a late-night host who loves the books finally has the time to write one, what does Middle-earth gain from it that the books and the original trilogy did not already give it?
Epic Fantasy hasn’t been this hard-hitting since Tolkien. In a world where humanity is akin to a Roman legion, a great darkness arises. Read A Throne Of Bones today.
