I don’t know what Hollywood’s thought process is exactly when it comes to popular and beloved stories, but as far as the fans are concerned, it certainly shouldn’t involve the words cashing in, milking, and dragging.
Much to the dismay of Middle-earth enthusiasts, the whole industry has decided to ride the gravy train of their favorite book The Lord of the Rings. After Amazon’s failed attempt at bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s world to live-action through The Rings of Power, which just wrapped up its abysmal second season and proved to everyone that the true dark lord was Jeff Bezos all along, it seems that Warner Bros. wants a little piece of that action, and it has contracted Middle-earth alums like Phillippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Andy Serkis to take on the challenge.
This new film was announced to be set before The Fellowship of the Ring, and involve Gandalf and Aragorn’s hunt for Gollum. Later, Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf’s actor in the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies) implied in an interview that the so-called Hunt For Gollum would be split into two films, making fans wonder if everyone in Hollywood has truly lost their minds.
Now, during another interview with Empire, Boyens has explained that the hunt for Gollum isn’t going to be two films, but there’s another script being ideated set in The Lord of the Rings timeline.
“I can tell you definitively it isn’t two films!” she explained. “That was a genuine misunderstanding that happened because we’ve begun to work, conceptually, on two different live-action films. The first being The Hunt For Gollum, the second one still to be confirmed.”
Oh, well, thank Eru Eru Ilúvatar and all his stars for that, I guess. Here I was thinking that making two films out of what’s essentially a two-paragraph anecdote by Gandalf in the books was a recipe for disaster. Now I have to dread the possibility of a film that even the writers aren’t too sure about, or they’d have announced it already.
Boyens further explained that since most of her ideas currently involve Gandalf, we can expect Sir Ian to appear in at least two more live-action Middle-earth movies. (This reminds me of the Deadpool & Wolverine joke; they’re going to make him do this till he’s 90… quite literally, in this case.)
“We’re playing around with a number of ideas, but most of those ideas do include Gandalf,” The scriptwriter explained. “So Gandalf would potentially return for two live-action films.”
And since no one is keeping this madness in check anymore, why not add a second anime film besides War of the Rohirrim to the mix? Boyens says that if the upcoming movie is successful, she already has “an absolute banger of a second film” cooking in her brain. Though why stop there? Why not make it a trilogy while we’re at it? *Sighs* They never learn, do they?
What is The Hunt for Gollum about?
If you’re still not clear on what The Hunt for Gollum is all about, it’s a story that happened off-screen in the movie trilogy and only briefly mentioned in the books. To confirm that Bilbo’s ring was indeed the weapon of the Enemy, Gandalf set out in Eriador in search of Gollum, a journey that took him all over Middle-earth. Eventually, he called upon Aragorn to help him in this search, and together they found Gollum’s trail and managed to capture him. They interrogated Gollum and left him imprisoned in the care of the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, from which the cunning creature eventually escaped.
For good or ill, this ramshackle premise, barely a story at all, will comprise the majority of The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis.
