Stephen Colbert Is Writing the Next Lord of the Rings Movie — and It's the One Fans Have Been Waiting For

For decades, hardcore Tolkien fans have had one standing grievance with Peter Jackson's beloved film adaptations: what happened to Tom Bombadil? The mysterious, ancient forest spirit who rescues the Hobbits early in The Fellowship of the Ring was cut entirely from the 2001 film. Now, a decade after the final Hobbit movie, that omission may finally be corrected — and the person doing the correcting is Stephen Colbert.

On Tuesday, March 24, 2026, Peter Jackson announced via social media that Colbert will co-write a new Lord of the Rings film tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, alongside franchise veteran Philippa Boyens and screenwriter Peter McGee. The announcement landed just weeks before Colbert's final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on May 21.

"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 in a joint video with Jackson announcing the project, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. "It's basically chapters 'Three Is Company' through 'Fog on the Barrow-downs,' 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?"

A Fan's Dream, Years in the Making

Colbert is not some celebrity slapped onto an IP project for marketing purposes. He is, by any measure, one of the most publicly obsessive Tolkien fans on the planet. He had a cameo — alongside his wife and children — in Jackson's 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. He has hosted panels at Comic-Con for both the Amazon series and The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. He has been known to recite passages from memory on television.

According to Deadline, Colbert first began developing the story concept with his son Peter Colbert, himself a working screenwriter. The project then sat in a drawer for years while Colbert kept hosting late night television. "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," Colbert told Jackson in the announcement video. "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."

Warner Bros. gave it the greenlight. Colbert confirmed in the video that the studio's film group chairs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca "loved it."

What the Movie Is Actually About

The film operates on two timelines. The official synopsis, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, 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."

That framing device — older Hobbits revisiting their early journey — serves as a wrapper for the story Colbert actually wants to tell: the six chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that Jackson's 2001 film compressed or skipped entirely. Per Deadline, those chapters include the sequence in the Old Forest, the encounter with Tom Bombadil, and the harrowing ordeal with the Barrow-wight in "Fog on the Barrow-downs."

Tom Bombadil — the ancient, enigmatic figure who lives in the forest with his wife Goldberry, is immune to the corrupting power of the One Ring, and sings constantly — has been a point of contention among Tolkien scholars and fans since the books were first published. Jackson chose not to include him in the film trilogy, a decision he defended on pacing and narrative grounds. Whether Colbert's version will resolve the longstanding debate over Bombadil's nature and significance remains to be seen, but his inclusion is confirmed by Deadline's reporting.

The Team Behind It

The creative unit assembled for Shadow of the Past is, by any standard, formidable. Philippa Boyens is one of the three screenwriters who shared the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004, alongside Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. She has been involved in every film in the franchise since the original trilogy. Peter McGee is the third credited writer on the project, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens will also serve as producers. This is the same producing team that shepherded all six Middle-earth films. The six films in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series have grossed a combined total of over $5.9 billion worldwide, according to multiple outlets including The Guardian and Deadline.

The film will be produced by Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema division, the same label that has held the film rights throughout the franchise's history.

The Context: Late Night's Most Politically Fraught Exit

Colbert's pivot to Middle-earth comes in the immediate aftermath of one of the more politically charged cancellations in recent late night television history. CBS canceled The Late Show last year following Paramount's $16 million settlement with Donald Trump — a settlement Colbert publicly criticized on air. The cancellation was widely characterized in the press as politically motivated, a charge that CBS publicly denied, saying the cancellation was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night." (Source: New York Times, February 17, 2026)

Jackson made a pointed joke about Colbert's newfound availability during the announcement video. When Colbert noted he'd need to find time to work on the film, Jackson said something to the effect of wondering how he'd manage it. Colbert's response, per The Guardian: "It turns out I'm going to be free starting this summer." Jackson replied: "Isn't that fortunate?"

The exchange was light, but the subtext was unmistakable. Colbert's 11-year run at The Late Show ends May 21. By summer, he will be a full-time screenwriter.

Where This Fits in the Larger Franchise Rebuild

Shadow of the Past is the second of two currently announced Lord of the Rings films. The first, Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, is directed by Andy Serkis — who portrayed Gollum across all six previous films — and is scheduled for release on December 17, 2027, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter. That film follows Aragorn and Gandalf's quest to find and capture Gollum during the timeline between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. Its confirmed cast includes Kate Winslet in an undisclosed role, Ian McKellen returning as Gandalf, and Andy Serkis reprising Gollum.

No release date has been announced for Shadow of the Past. Given that Hunt for Gollum doesn't arrive until late 2027, a reasonable estimate would put Shadow of the Past no earlier than 2029 or 2030.

The Bombadil Question

Tolkien scholars have debated Tom Bombadil's significance for roughly 75 years. Tolkien himself called Bombadil "the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside" in correspondence, but also described him as "the first and the oldest" being in Middle-earth — predating even Sauron and the Valar. The character is completely unaffected by the Ring; he puts it on and nothing happens. He exists outside the mythology's power structures entirely.

Jackson's decision to cut him was defensible from a plotting standpoint. Bombadil doesn't advance the war against Sauron. He doesn't help destroy the Ring. He is, in a literal sense, a narrative detour. But Bombadil's omission also removed one of the book's most philosophically interesting arguments: that some things in the world are simply beyond the reach of power, corruption, or destruction — and that this indifference is itself a form of freedom.

Whether Colbert, a television writer by trade and a Tolkien devotee by passion, can bring that argument to a wide theatrical audience is an open question. What isn't in question is that he has studied the material longer and more obsessively than almost anyone who might be given this assignment. The gamble, for Warner Bros. and for the franchise, is that love of source material can substitute for — or at least supplement — experience in feature film narrative structure.

The precedent isn't encouraging across the board. Fans frequently make passionate adaptors of beloved material and occasionally make gifted ones. Colbert, at minimum, will not be caught misremembering what happens in chapter six.

The Bottom Line

The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is, structurally, one of the more unusual major studio announcements in recent memory: a beloved franchise's next installment entrusted to a late night television host who has spent his entire adult life preparing for the assignment without knowing he'd ever get it. The creative team around him — Jackson, Walsh, Boyens — is the same one that turned a supposedly unfilmable trilogy into one of the most successful movie franchises in cinema history.

The film has no production start date, no release window, and no confirmed cast beyond the implication that original Hobbit actors may be involved in a sequel-era story featuring Sam, Merry, and Pippin. What it has is a clear concept, a credible creative team, a well-understood source text, and a writer whose qualification for the job is, at minimum, genuine.

Tom Bombadil is finally coming to a theater near you. Whether that's a miracle or a mistake depends on how the next few years go.