Hey, remember when the Huggers gobbled up the Middle-Earth Enterprises and the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in all forms of media? Well, a new movie is now in active development as promised, and it’s about… Gollum.
The news, released on May 9 (via Variety ), shouldn’t catch anyone off guard, as Embracer has expressed active interest in developing a slate of new movies after taking control of the famed IP. In early 2023, we learned they were teaming up with New Line Cinema, who had picked up all six previous Peter Jackson-directed epics, to develop the new project. Now, we also know that Peter Jackson and his creative partners are directly involved in the development of a Gollum-centric prequel, tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
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The Legacy collaboration doesn’t just bring Jackson back as a producer, with his long-time collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Bones also joining Phoebe Gittins and Artie Papagegio produced and helped develop the script; prior to Embracer’s acquisition, the pair co-created the animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which will be released this Christmas.
Unsurprisingly, Andy Serkis reprises his most famous role and directs this film after directing Mowgli and Venom, both of which Neither performance was stellar, but at least they had a bit of style.To be fair, if this This is a movie that Warner Bros. Discovery and Hugger want to move forward with, and he deserves to direct because it’s hard to imagine how Jackson would have pulled off the role without him.
Currently, Warner Bros. Discovery and Embrace are aiming to launch the film in 2026, but have not provided a more specific release window. If plans don’t change, Christmas 2026 will likely happen, as Disney and Lucasfilm may delay the Star Wars movie currently scheduled for release on December 18 (possibly the Rey-centric one) , and the fourth Avatar is nowhere near ready to cover it up.
Despite the talent of the project, the Gollum prequel is one of the least engaging Lord of the Rings movies we can think of, even if we do like the little freak. This does confirm our fears that Embracer and WB Discovery don’t have any exciting IP ideas yet and will only be producing random spin-offs based on iconic characters for the foreseeable time.We wish Serkis good luck, but this feels more like Lord of the slopes at the moment. That said, it can’t be any worse than last year’s Atelier Hitman game, right?
