Lord Of The Rings Sequel Confirmed With Script By Stephen Colbert

US broadcaster Stephen Colbert has big plans to keep himself busy when his talk show goes off the air in May.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, it was announced that Colbert will be co-writing a new instalment in the Lord Of The Rings franchise, based on the eighth chapter in JRR Tolkien’s novel The Fellowship Of The Ring.

Filmmaker Peter Jackson announced the news in a social media video, ostensibly about the next film in the big-screen series, The Hunt For Gollum, in which he teased that “that’s not the only Tolkien movie that we’re developing”.

Per Deadline, the film will be called The Lord Of The Rings: Shadow Of The Past, and will be set 14 years after the death of Frodo, with Sam, Merry and Pippin reflecting on the very beginnings of their adventures in Middle Earth.

Colbert, a Lord Of The Rings superfan, told the director: “You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me, but the thing that I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [The Fellowship Of The Ring] that y’all never developed into the first movie.

“And I thought ‘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?’.”

He added that he first pitched his idea around two years ago, and after getting the green light, the project is now moving forward.

In the 25 years since the first instalment in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy hit cinemas, the New Zealand-based director has also helmed a new trilogy based on Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit.

Meanwhile, the cast of the original trilogy are expected to return in the new movie The Hunt For Gollum, which is expected to hit cinemas in 2027.