Peter Jackson Officially Confirms the Status of Stephen Colbert’s Lord of the Rings Sequel

We are just over two weeks away from the premiere of the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is set to arrive on November 11 with its first four episodes. A return to Middle-earth is imminent and we simply cannot wait. However, over the decades, interest in the world that J.R.R. Tolkien built has continued to rise as the years roll by. As we head into 2027, that appetite for more will likely remain strong even after The Rings of Power completes its third season, with another adventure already on the horizon for December 2027. Andy Serkis, who is not strange to this world of elves, man and orcs, will be directing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, a new saga that makes its way to theaters on December 17, 2027.Serkis originally played the complicated character, Sméagol/Gollum, in all three parts of the original trilogy of The Lord of the Rings which first premiered in the early 2000s. The critically acclaimed trilogy was expertly directed by Peter Jackson and introduces Gollum during The Fellowship of the Ring before his story terminates quite tragically in the fires of Mount Doom in The Return of the King. The Hunt for Gollum will cover the events which preceded the Council of Elrond at Rivendell, which ultimately launched the quest to destroy the One Ring. Serkis will reprise his role, but that will not be the end of new titles emerging from Tolkien's world.Stephen Colbert, famed television host and incredibly geeky Tolkien superfan, is poised to deliver yet another adventure from the annals of Middle-earth and trilogy director Jackson has offered up a status update. Colbert’s adventure, titled The Lord of the Rings: The Shadow of the Past, was rumored to have been put on hold amid the corporate shake-up at Warner Bros. However, Jackson, while speaking at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain earlier this month, sought to dispel that fear: Collider Exclusive · Middle-earth Quiz Which Lord of the RingsRace Do You Belong To? Hobbit · Elf · Dwarf · Man · Orc Middle-earth is home to many peoples — the courageous, the ancient, the stubborn, the ambitious, and the wretched. Ten questions will determine which race truly claims your soul. The answer may surprise you. Or it may confirm what you already suspected. 🌿Hobbit 🌟Elf ⚒️Dwarf ⚔️Man 💀Orc 01 What does your ideal day look like? How we rest reveals as much as how we fight. 02 How do you feel about the passing of time? Our relationship with mortality shapes everything we value. 03 Danger is approaching. Your first instinct is to: Fight, flight, or something in between — it's more revealing than you'd think. 04 You stumble upon a great treasure. What do you feel? What we desire — and what we do about it — is the true test. 05 How important is community and belonging to you? No race of Middle-earth is truly alone — but some prefer it that way. 06 How ambitious are you, honestly? Ambition is neither virtue nor vice — it depends entirely on what you want. 07 Where do you feel most at home in the natural world? Middle-earth is vast — and every race has its place within it. 08 What kind of strength do you most respect? Every race defines strength differently — and they're all at least a little right. 09 What do you want to leave behind when you're gone? Legacy is the story we tell ourselves about why any of this matters. 10 Be honest — what do you actually want most out of life? The truest question always comes last. Middle-earth Has Spoken You Belong To…The race that claimed the most of your answers is your true kin. If two tied, both are shown — you walk between worlds. ◆ A TIE — YOU WALK BETWEEN TWO RACES ◆ 🌿Your Race The HobbitsYou are, at your core, a creature of comfort, community, and quiet joy — and there is nothing small about that. Hobbits are proof that heroism does not require ambition, that the bravest heart can beat inside the most unassuming chest. You value good food, warm hearths, close friends, and a world that stays largely untroubled by dark lords and quests. When adventure does find you — and it will — you rise to it not because you sought it, but because the people you love needed you to. That is not ordinary. That is the rarest kind of courage in all of Middle-earth. 🌟Your Race The ElvesAncient, graceful, and carrying a weight of memory most mortals cannot fathom, you are one of the Elves. You see the world in its fullness — its beauty, its impermanence, the unbearable ache of watching everything you love eventually fade. You pursue perfection not from pride, but because excellence is how you honour the time you have been given. Others may see you as remote or melancholy. They are not wrong, exactly. But they mistake depth for distance. You feel everything — which is precisely why you have learned to carry it so quietly. ⚒️Your Race The DwarvesStubborn, proud, fiercely loyal, and possessed of a work ethic that would exhaust most other races before breakfast — you are Dwarf-kind through and through. You do not ask for approval and you do not offer it cheaply. Your loyalty, once given, is given for life. Your grudges last longer. You love deeply and defend ferociously, and the things you build — with your hands, with your sweat, with generations of accumulated craft — are made to last. Not for glory. Because anything worth doing is worth doing properly, and you have never once done anything by half measures. ⚔️Your Race The Race of MenMortal, ambitious, flawed, and magnificent — you belong to the most complicated race in Middle-earth, and that complexity is your greatest strength. Men are capable of cowardice and extraordinary bravery, of cruelty and breathtaking sacrifice, sometimes within the same breath. You feel the urgency of your finite years, and it drives you. You want to matter. You want to leave something behind. You fall, and you rise, and the rising is what defines you. Tolkien called mortality the Gift of Men — not a curse, but a fire that burns bright precisely because it does not burn forever. That fire is you. 💀Your Race The OrcsBrutal, survivalist, and contemptuous of anything that can't defend itself — you answered with the instincts of an Orc, and there is a certain savage honesty in that. You do not dress up your desires in polite language or pretend you want things you don't. You want power, survival, and to never be at the bottom of any hierarchy ever again. Orcs are not evil by nature — they were made from something that was once good, and broken into this shape by forces they did not choose. What remains is fierce, territorial, and deeply aware that the world is not kind. You've made your peace with that. The question is what you do with it. As is often the case with novel-to-screen adaptations, certain chapters and stories from the original text are sidestepped for creative reasons. This is the avenue Colbert's The Shadow of the Past seeks to exploit. The upcoming adventure will revisit six chapters from Tolkien’s novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, going into sections that Jackson’s original trilogy left unexplored, including the enigmatic Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest, which he calls home. The Shadow of the Past is set fourteen years after Frodo departs Middle-earth for the Undying Lands. The story follows Sam, Merry, and Pippin as they retrace the early stages of their original journey, while Sam’s daughter Elanor investigates a secret connected to the War of the Ring.The Shadow of the Past does not have a release date yet, but The Hunt for Gollum arrives in theaters on December 17, 2027. Stay tuned to Collider for updates.