Regardless of Embracer’s repeated warnings, the world was shocked when final week a brand new Lord of the Rings film was confirmed. Furthermore, it was revealed that the brand new big-screen venture is titled The Hunt for Gollum, and everybody began questioning who requested for this. Nicely, now we all know that the pitch got here from the filmmakers behind the six earlier New Line-produced films, truly.
Deadline’s in-depth article, which options quotes straight from Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis, and author Philippa Boyens will put some minds comfortable, but it appears the Center-earth veterans at the moment are tied to a brand new wave of The Lord of the Rings initiatives they hadn’t thought of earlier than.
Phrase on the road final week was that Embracer and Warner Bros. Discovery, of their seemingly countless seek for bankable IPs to mine, had toyed with the concept of doing protected spinoffs and prequels that adopted a youthful Aragorn or Gandalf, amongst different well-known names. “Gollum’s life span takes place in such an fascinating interval of Center-earth. When the query was first requested, this was the primary story we considered. As a result of I can inform you, and folks won’t consider this, however we had zero expectations of going again to this. It wasn’t one thing we have been seeking to do, significantly,” Boyens defined.
When it was introduced that Embracer would workforce up with New Line Cinema to maintain issues easy and benefit from their intensive expertise in Center-earth, many thought the primary batch of recent films would give attention to parallel occasions to the Struggle of the Ring or prequels and bland spinoffs that fleshed out among the most iconic characters from The Hobbit and/or The Lord of the Rings. It was a miserable prospect, actually, and the announcement of a Gollum-centric film sounded precisely like that. Now, it at the very least looks like there was a artistic starvation to inform that story lengthy earlier than Embracer and Warner knocked on the veterans’ door.
“I feel he connects with readers and movie audiences alike, as a result of there’s somewhat little bit of each of them in all of us. We actually wish to discover his backstory and delve into these components of his journey we didn’t have time to cowl within the earlier movies. It’s too quickly to know who will cross his path, however suffice to say we are going to take our lead from Professor Tolkien,” Jackson mentioned. No matter how we really feel about this venture and the three divisive Hobbit prequels that Jackson directed greater than a decade in the past, we all know he and his companions are able to juicing up what proper now seems like a fairly hole pitch. How will the final audiences react to a different doubtlessly bloated pre-LOTR story although? All of us love Gollum, he is a enjoyable little man, however is there sufficient gasoline left in there?
One other secret weapon to make diehards extra could be Andy Serkis, who’s set to direct the film on prime of taking part in Smeagol/Gollum as soon as once more. Whereas his output within the director’s chair in relation to blockbusters is not stellar (Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, Venom: Let There Be Carnage), it is easy to note most points got here from the scripts slightly than his precise directorial decisions, which have been persistently fashionable and drew rather a lot from his second unit work on the Hobbit films. Including him to the Jackson-Boyens-Walsh workforce added loads of shine to an announcement that in any other case would’ve solely obtained chilly shoulders.
“I’m very honored that they’ve requested me to return again. I actually am…it was Philippa who first referred to as me truly and mentioned, look, that is what we’re considering. And I used to be simply flushed with a kind of, oh my God, I’m going again in there. Yeah, it was a terrific second.” Yep, even Serkis is shocked that the gang goes proper again into Center-earth once more. He additionally identified that he by no means actually left Tolkien’s universe, as he is additionally been engaged on audio books of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion. Moreover, his time taking part in Gollum clearly knowledgeable his tackle different groundbreaking mo-cap characters equivalent to Caesar and the opposite apes within the fashionable Planet of the Apes films.
“We’ve the proper to the Lord of the Rings and the appendices, and that’s it,” Boyens mentioned when requested a couple of potential enlargement previous the borders of LOTR and The Hobbit. She additionally confirms she hasn’t watched Amazon’s tackle the Second Age as a result of she did not wish to be influenced by it, however she thinks they selected properly when determining the premise: “The making of the rings of energy is a superb piece of storytelling. It’s an excellent period, filled with fascinating characters.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is at the moment set to launch in 2026, however a extra particular window or date hasn’t been shared. If we needed to guess, the Christmas slot might be a protected wager… if the venture would not hit bumps within the street to filming. This yr, nevertheless, The Struggle of the Rohirrim, an animated film in growth properly earlier than Embracer took over the IP, arrives in theaters on December 13.