Stephen Colbert is co-writing a new The Lord of the Rings movie based on the Fellowship of the Ring.
The Late Show host and his son Peter McGee are teaming up with Warner Bros on the follow-up to new film The Hunt For Gollum which would explore chapters of JRR Tolkien's novel which didn't make it into Peter Jackson's original cinematic trilogy, which started in 2001.
Appearing alongside the filmmaker in a video announcement for The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, Colbert said: “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 of the Ring] that ya’ll never developed into the first movie back in the day.
"It’s basically the chapter Three is Company [Chapter III] through Fog on the Barrow-Downs [Chapter VIII].
"And I thought, ‘Oh, 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?' ”
Colbert - who is an avid Tolkien fan - and his screenwriter son McGee discussed the idea and figured out a "framing device".
Colbert then spoke to Jackson, and they've spent the last two years working with screenwriter Philippa Boyens - who helped Jackson pen his Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies - to develop a script.
He added to Jackson: "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.
"You liked it enough to talk to me about it, and ever since then, the two of us have been working with the brilliant Philippa Boyens on how to develop this story.”
The official logline 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.”
Colbert hasn't developed a movie before, but he landed a small role in 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, as well as directing Jackson, Sir Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Food in 2019 Middle-earth short film Darrylgorn.
Elsewhere in the announcement video, Jackson also gave a brief update on Andy Serkis' upcoming Hunt For Gollum movie, which is set to be released in 2027 and is set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies.
He said: "Andy is doing a terrific job. It’s looking amazing. The script is coming together really well and I think it’s going to be a really good film.”
McKellen will be reprising his role as Gandalf with Serkis once again playing Gollum, while Kate Winslet has been cast in an undisclosed role, and Wood has strongly hinted he will be back as Frodo.
