Stephen Colbert Responds to Concerns He’s Only Making a Lord of the Rings Spinoff Because He’s a Famous Fan

Lord of the Rings superfan Stephen Colbert has addressed complaints around his upcoming spinoff movie, Shadow of the Past, and dismissed the idea he needs to prove his worth to fans.

Colbert’s announcement that he was co-writing the latest Lord of the Rings spinoff project raised eyebrows earlier this year — firstly at there being yet another extension of the Middle-earth franchise on the way, but also at Colbert himself being involved.

The veteran late night talkshow host has long been public about his love and knowledge for Middle-earth, and has written for his own shows for decades — though nothing on the scale of a Lord of the Rings movie.

Now, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Colbert has acknowledged the online response from some Middle-earth fans to the film’s announcement — after many suggested he only got the job because he was a high-profile fan, rather than because he was the best person to write a Lord of the Rings movie script.

“I mean, there’s no reason to,” Colbert said when asked why fans should trust him with the franchise. “And there’s no value in me addressing that because all you can do as — I’ll use a loaded term here — an artist is follow your heart and the craft that you have learned to try to turn this into something that is not fandom but drama.”

Shadow of the Past will follow Andy Serkis’ upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum as yet another addition to The Lord of the Rings’ movie canon, this time extending the original trilogy’s narrative by revealing events unseen during the Fellowship of the Ring film.

Essentially, Colbert’s movie will detail chapters 3 to 8 of Tolkien’s original Fellowship novel, which were left out of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation. These pages see the Hobbits venture further out of the Shire and encounter the mysterious figure of Tom Bombadil — events which Jackson skipped over to get the characters to Bree and Weathertop at a greater pace.

A description of the film suggests these chapters will be explored through flashback, with an older Sam, Merry and Pippin recalling their past adventures to Elanor, Sam’s daughter, more than a decade after the conclusion of Return of the King.

“Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo – Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure,” reads a Shadow of the Past synopsis. “Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”

But while Colbert is seen by many fans as the most high-profile person working on the film, he is not penning its script solo.

“Luckily, I don’t have to do this alone,” Colbert continued. “I have a great Sherpa in [co-writer and LOTR veteran] Philippa Boyens, who cares about it in the same way I do. And I will just say that every moment has been a joy so far.”

Boyens, a close collaborator with Jackson, also co-wrote the scripts for the original Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, as well as Jackson’s other projects such as King Kong and The Lovely Bones.

For now, fans will likely have to wait a while longer for more details on The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, which currently lacks a release date. In the meantime, The Hunt for Gollum is scheduled to be released on 17 December 2027, and before that there’s the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power due later this year.

Image source: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for FLC.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social