“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday confirmed that dreams can indeed come true, revealing alongside “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson that he’s been quietly working with him for years — and writing a brand-new installment for the beloved franchise.
“Yeah, I’m pretty happy about it,” Colbert told Jackson during their video call announcement.
There is arguably no other television personality with a more encyclopedic knowledge of the J.R.R. Tolkien books than Colbert, as he has regularly proven over the past 11 years on his “Late Show” during some genuinely impressive pop-quiz trivia segments on the material.
“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson. “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 he’s writing the script with his son Peter McGee and that the film will be based on material from the first book in Tolkien’s series, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” specifically Chapter 3, “Three Is Company,” through Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, wait! Maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story,’” Colbert told Jackson. “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?”
He said, “I started talking it over with my son Peter, who’s also a screenwriter, and we worked out what we thought would work, especially as a framing device for that story, and 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.”
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The film is tentatively titled “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past” but is still in early development — and a sequel to the upcoming “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” which will see Andy Serkis reprise his role as the titular ring-obsessed creature.
The news is certainly heartwarming for fans who’ve known about Colbert’s lifelong “Rings” obsession, and those who felt frustration after CBS canceled his show following controversial pressure from President Donald Trump’s FCC head, Brendan Carr.
Jackson cheekily asked his new partner Wednesday if he’s sure he’s got the time to work on this with him, only for the ousted “Late Show” host to quip that “it turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer” — as his final “Late Show” episode airs May 21.
Earlier in their chat, Colbert warmly recalled winning Jackson over with his idea and pitching it to executives at New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. He told the Oscar-winning director, “I could not be happier to say that they loved it.”
Colbert happily added before signing off, “And so, that’s what we’re going to be working on.”
