(Burbank, CA) Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group’s Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy has announced that Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion blockbuster The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are reuniting to produce two new films from Tolkien’s Middle-earth for Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema. Is this new news? Not especially. The press release from Warner Bros. about this is dated May 9, 2024. They have started putting their foot on the gas now, though, after the geek press only gave them a little bit of fizz the first time.

The first of the two films The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (working title) will be directed by and star Andy Serkis (Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle), with Walsh and Boyens set to write the screenplay, along with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou (The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim). The film will be executive produced by Ken Kamins, with Serkis and The Imaginarium’s Jonathan Cavendish.

Said De Luca and Abdy, “For over two-decades, moviegoers have embraced The Lord of the Rings film trilogy because of the undeniable devotion Peter, Fran and Philippa have shown towards protecting the legacy of Tolkien’s works, and to ensure audiences could experience the incredible world he created in a way that honors his literary vision. We are honored they have agreed be our partners on these two new films. With Andy coming aboard to direct The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, we continue an important commitment to excellence that is a true hallmark of how we all want to venture ahead and further contribute to The Lord of the Rings cinematic history.”

Said Jackson, Walsh and Boyens, “It is an honour and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker – Gollum! As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”

Said Serkis, ““Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth Peter, Fran and Philippa,” said Serkis. “With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros. team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our film making family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious…”.

Can we please take a moment here to give voice to what at least some of us are thinking about this idea? And that communal thought is — and please, if you disagree with me here, comment on this article at the bottom — why, in the name of Gandalf do we need two movies about Gollum? Yes, Andy Serkis’ performance made him an appealing character, but the story is now told. If you want to do a film, the Silmarillion is still there, and largely untouched, though that tome is largely comprised of background material that Tolkien had written prior to writing The Hobbit in support of the fantastical world he was creating. When you think about what kind of film you want to make, the first thing you do is decide whether there’s enough of a demand there for making your film. Let’s be clear as we can about this: nobody — nobody — was writing to Peter Jackson asking him for these two movies. No, this was the result of Warner Bros. marketing division sifting through the franchises they currently own, like Shelob sorting through the cocooned living bodies of the members of the Fellowship hanging from the branches of the twisted trees of Mirkwood to see if there’s any juice left in the bodies worth sucking out.

The enthusiasm Warner has for the project is certainly understandable. Collectively, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies have earned nearly $6B at the global box office. The Fellowship of the Rings ranked as the 2nd highest grossing film worldwide, and The Two Towers and The Return of the King were the highest grossing films globally during their respective theatrical runs. Sir Peter Jackson, slated to helm the new films, made history with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, becoming the first person to direct three major feature films simultaneously. The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were nominated for and collected a slew of awards from around the globe, with The Return of the King receiving his most impressive collection of awards. This included three Academy Awards® (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture), two Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Motion Picture-Drama), three BAFTAs (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Viewers), a Directors Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Interestingly, the story of the Hunt for Golem has already been done. The Hunt for Gollum is an independent film based on appendices in The Lord of the Rings. It was produced entirely by fans, and released free to the Internet in 2009. Locations include Epping Forest and Snowdonia, north Wales. Awards include ‘Best Fiction Produced for the Web’, 2009 and Best Live Action at Balticon. So, Warner Bros. might have taken some notes here. Their working title is just drawing attention to something fans did a pretty respectable job of from a cinematic standpoint fifteen years ago.

The Hunt for Gollum (the fan film) used locations in Epping Forest and Snowdonia, in the north of Wales, and everything they used for the film they made themselves. They borrowed no music, nor sound effects, nor footage from the Peter Jackson films. It’s about 40 minutes long, which makes sense considering that the entire story is essentially just extracted from marginalia from the original Tolkien trilogy. The version we include below has been slightly cleaned up, retimed and improved from an audio standpoint by the original producer of the film. Once again, this is a fan film. For Warner Bros. to be following on with a two picture concept now doesn’t make them look exceedingly innovative.

Still, Warner Bros. does have an incredible momentum built up behind their project. The source films were a wild success, and stayed that way. The Fellowship of the Rings (2001), The Two Towers (2002), The Return of the King (2003), An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) have pushed the boundaries of filmmaking with groundbreaking visual and special effects, earning unprecedented recognition by the Academy Awards spanning two-decades. The Lord of the Rings films each received a Best Picture nomination (*when there were 5 nominees), winning a combined 17 Oscars, including 11 wins for The Return of the King across each of its nominated categories including Best Picture, and received 30 nominations across all three films. An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies movies in The Hobbit trilogy received 7 Oscar nominations and won an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical achievement for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. In 2021, The Fellowship of the Ring was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the Nation Film Registry.

The announcement of the new films follows the previously announced New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation’s anime feature film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim opening this Christmas. Directed by Award winning filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series), the film is produced by Boyens, Joseph Chou (Blade Runner: Black Lotus), and Jason DeMarco.

So, yes, we get that success breeds success, and that they’ll likely make at least some money doing this new two-picture project. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films stand as a towering achievement in cinema, and one whose ilk is unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes, but collectively, it is my assertion, first, that we do not want these films so much as Warner Bros. does, and second, is there really enough in what is essentially the liner notes from the original books to make two more movies? I personally love The Lord of the Rings and pretty much everything about the books, but here we are at a new crossroads.

It is a crossroads at which Warner Bros. has an opportunity to choose a new path. The Gollum computer game, released May 25, 2023, was so poorly received that on launch date Steam recorded fewer than 800 players. Now, the game itself was pretty dreadful, and it’s astonishing that it wasn’t pulled by the folks at Warner Bros. minding the brand when it came out. They clearly were not paying attention. If they cared so little for the francise then, why should we, collectively, believe they have matters in hand now?

Again, I welcome opposing views if you care to comment. I admit that I do not have terribly deep insight into the operations of major motion picture studios or their franchise management, and it has been more than a few years since I was actively involved in feature motion picture production myself, but it’s hard to ignore the signs.

The first of the two films, ostensibly titled The Hunt for Gollum, are expected to release starting in 2026.

Gene Turnbow

President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur – all geek.