Stephen Colbert Will Write the Next ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Inspired by the “Fog on the Barrow-Downs” Chapter
Stephen Colbert will embark on a high-profile project following his departure from CBS’s The Late Show on May 21. He will collaborate with New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures to adapt the next Lord of the Rings film.
Tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, the film will be co-written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens, and Peter McGee, with iconic filmmakers Sir Peter Jackson and Dame Fran Walsh also involved.
Colbert shared that the film will draw inspiration from “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, which follows Hobbits ensnared by a Barrow-wight in a mysterious fog.
This adaptation represents the second Lord of the Rings movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s appendices. The upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis, is scheduled for release on December 17, 2027.
Set fourteen years after Frodo’s passing, Shadow of the Past follows Sam, Merry, and Pippin as they revisit their original journey. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, unearths a long-hidden secret, revealing why the War of the Ring was nearly lost before it began.
Colbert expressed his deep affection for both the books and films during a video announcement with Peter Jackson. “You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me, 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,” he remarked.
He pondered the challenge of creating a project that is “completely faithful to the books” while also respecting the established films.
A longtime enthusiast of the Lord of the Rings franchise, Colbert has previously hosted panels at Comic-Con for both the Amazon series and the 2014 film The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.
In a lighthearted exchange, Jackson joked about the timeline for the adaptation, to which Colbert responded, “It turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer.” He acknowledged that continuing to host the late-night show would have made it impossible to take on this new project.
The collective earnings of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series, across six films, exceed $5.9 billion worldwide.
