Stephen Colbert developing new Lord of the Rings movie

Stephen Colbert and his son are working on a new standalone Lord of the Rings movie, franchise supremo Peter Jackson has revealed.

Several years ago it was revealed that Jackson was developing a new series of films set in the LOTR universe based on the works of author JRR Tolkien.

The first of those – The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt For Gollum – is in progress from Andy Serkis and is due for release on December 17, 2027.

Appearing in a video on social media, Jackson disclosed that the second live-action film will be called The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past.

Colbert, whose US talkshow is coming to an end this May, is a known LOTR diehard fan and has been working on the project with his screenwriter son Peter McGee, Jackson and screenwriter Philippa Boyens.

In his video, Jackson patched in Colbert, who said: “You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me. But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [The Fellowship of the Ring] that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day.

“It’s basically the chapter ‘Three Is Company’ [Chapter III] through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’ [Chapter VIII]. And I thought, ‘Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?'”

According to Variety, an official synopsis for the film reads: “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo — Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. 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.”

A target release date for the movie has yet to be revealed, although production timescales mean that it is unlikely to be released before 2028 at the earliest.