News: Steven Colbert + LOTR = Please Send the Asteroid Now.

It’s been a hot minute since I last wrote about some new, woke Hollywood flop coming out to destroy our last remaining braincells…longer still since I wrote regarding any new Lord of the Rings adaptations. Most of that has been since I’ve been preoccupied with other things or just didn’t care as much about some of the stuff coming out. However, it recently came to my attention that not only is Peter Jackson back to write a new LOTR movie, but he has hired none other than Steven Colbert to write it.

Steven Colbert…the dude who singlehandedly nuked his own show. That’s the guy who Peter Jackson is trusting with a new Lord of the Rings adaptation.

Had this been several years ago, this already would not have boded well for the Lord of the Rings franchise because while Steven Colbert is a Tolkien superfan, that does not mean that he has the writing skills needed to a write a script that properly adapts Tolkien’s work. His skill in keeping his personal politics out of it would also be of major concern.

But add on the fact that we’re currently in 2026 and have already seen what hell Amazon wrought on Tolkien’s work with Rings of Power and already, die-hard Tolkien fans are skeptical of any attempt to adapt Tolkien’s work. Additionally, after the 2024 release of The War of the Rohirrim, which had Philipa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and Peter Jackson working on it, and we have even more right to be skeptical. Why? Because the entire movie was an animated bait-and-switch as instead of focusing on Helm Hammerhand, it focused on his daughter, who Tolkien deemed so unimportant that he didn’t even give her a name.

From this, we can already see that this is going to be a perfect storm to possibly mess up Tolkien’s work more than Amazon did. But don’t worry. This is only going to get worse since I haven’t even told you about what the story is expected to be. Per Variety:

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema confirmed that Colbert will co-write “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past” alongside screenwriter Philippa Boyens and Colbert’s son Peter McGee, with Jackson producing. The film, which draws from six chapters of “The Fellowship of the Ring” that Jackson never adapted, is set 14 years after the passing of Frodo, following Sam, Merry and Pippin as they retrace the first steps of their journey while Sam’s daughter Elanor uncovers a secret that nearly cost them everything.

I think we all know who the real protagonist of the movie is going to be. I’ll give you a hint. It won’t be any of the guys.

Even worse for this movie is that fact that the story is going to be based off of five chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, particularly chapters 3-8. The issue with this, however, is that already, there have been parts of those chapters that were adapted into the original LOTR movies, though many of the events in the chapters were cut out for the sake of time. Thus, how they plan to properly adapt those scenes, I’m not sure.

Additionally, how they plan to adapt characters such as Tom Bombadil is questionable, especially since we’ve already seen what Amazon did to Tom. Are they going to keep him the jolly guy from the books or are they going to make him more serious? Either way, it doesn’t work because while Colbert has said he wants to keep his adaptation accurate to the books, he also wants to keep it accurate to the movies. The movies, however, didn’t really have room for longer moments of humor. They kept a very serious tone throughout, so a book accurate Tom Bombadil wouldn’t really fit a “movie-accurate” adaptation. On that same note, a more serious Tom Bombadil wouldn’t fit the book because he’s a fun character in the book.

From there, we also run into a similar issue as the other Lord of the Rings prequel movie that’s suspected to arrive this year: the age of the cast.

Sure, while having everything happen years after the events of the Lord of the Rings movies can make up for this somewhat, in scenes that go back to the original adventure, there will be problems given the fact that the original cast is 20 years older now. Unless they do a heck of a job with the de-aging software, I don’t think it’s going to look good.

Overall, this entire thing is ultimately a desperate attempt to keep the rights to The Lord of the Rings before they expire, but without any of the foresight, creativity, or dedication to Tolkien’s work that characterized the Lord of the Rings movies.

Until next time,

M.J.