Andy Serkis to Direct and Star in New “Lord of the Rings” Gollum Movie, Peter Jackson Producing
Currently titled ‘The Hunt for Gollum,’ the new film is the first of two live-action ‘Lord of the Rings’ films Peter Jackson is developing
Photo 12 / Alamy ; Karwai Tang/WireImage Andy Serkis
Andy Serkis is heading back to Middle-earth.
Warner Bros. announced May 9 that Serkis, 60, will reprise his role as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings franchise for a new film currently titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
Serkis, who broke out in the early 2000s with his motion-capture performance as the antagonizing, Ring of Power–obsessed creature, is also set to direct the film.
Peter Jackson, who directed the three Lord of the Rings films and the Hobbit prequel trilogy, is set to return as a producer alongside Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, the screenwriters who adapted author J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels for the screen.
Walsh and Boyens will write the screenplay alongside Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, the screenwriters behind the animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, out this fall.
“It is an honor and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker – Gollum!” Jackson, Walsh and Boyens said in a statement.
The newly announced movie is the first of two set in Middle-earth that Jackson, Walsh and Boyens are reuniting to produce for Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema.
While no information has yet been revealed about the second film, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during a May 9 conference call that the company is in “early stages of script development” on new films in the franchise that they intend to release in 2026, as multiple outlets reported.
New Line/Kobal/Shutterstock Andy Serkis in ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King’
“Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth, Peter, Fran and Philippa,” Serkis said in a release, echoing his character Gollum’s manner of speaking.
“With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our filmmaking family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious.…”
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Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema first announced in February 2023 that it had struck a deal with rights holder Embracer Group AB to develop new feature films based on Tolkien’s books. At the time, the studio said the world envisioned by the late author, who died in 1973, “remains largely unexplored on film.”
New Line/Kobal/Shutterstock Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis and Sean Astin in The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Jackson’s three Lord of the Rings movies, filmed simultaneously and released between 2001 and 2003, earned a combined 17 Academy Awards and grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.
Prime Video released a live-action The Lord of the Rings prequel series titled The Rings of Power in 2022, with a second season scheduled to release in 2024, as The Hollywood Reporter reported in February. Warner Bros. and New Line’s animated The War for the Rohirrim is in theaters Dec. 13.
Read the original article on People.