'Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum': Everything To Know

In the first week of March 2025, the most-watched movie on Max is The Lord of the Rings. No, not Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, or The Return of the King, or any of his Hobbit films. It’s The War of the Rohirrim, director Kenji Kamiyama’s anime prequel that underperformed at the box office but has clearly found an audience on streaming.

The War of the Rohirrim is the last The Lord of the Rings movie for a bit, but the next one will be worth the wait. Here’s everything we know about The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis.

Plot

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum announcement came with a statement from Andy Serkis, who provided the motion-capture performance and voice for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning The Lord of The Rings trilogy. He will direct the new film, with a script from Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou.

“Yesssss, Precious,” Serkis wrote. “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. With [Warner Bros. executives] 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…”

Here’s what Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had to say:

“It is an honour 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! As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy, and the team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”

No official plot details were provided, but according to The Playlist, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will take place around the events of Bilbo’s 111st birthday party, as depicted in The Fellowship of the Ring.

“Yes, it’s deliberately the bridging film and the story we wanted to tell,” Boyens told the publication. “It does center on Gollum/Smeagol, so it’s a little bit of an origin story going on, but when you delve into it, as you do with anything Professor Tolkien wrote, you see the layers and layers of story that’s underneath there and how interconnected they all are.”

Does that make it The Lord of The Rings version of Rogue One? Rogue One Ring, if you will.

Cast

The only confirmed cast member is, well, Andy Serkis as Gollum. However, there’s a strong possibility of seeing some familiar faces again.

Last September, Ian McKellen (Gandalf) shared to Big Issue that he’s “been told there are going to be more films and Gandalf will be involved and they hope that I’ll be playing him. When? I don’t know. What the script is? It’s not written yet. So they better be quick!” Viggo Mortensen is also up for reprising his role as Aragorn, as long as he’s “right for it in terms of, you know, the age I am now and so forth,” the actor told GQ UK. “I would only do it if I was right for the character. It would be silly to do it otherwise.”

As you might imagine, Serkis isn’t giving up the goods until every “i” (of Sauron) is dotted and every “t” is crossed. “I don’t want to commit anything right now. I mean, because it’s so raw and so raw and wriggling, and we are just literally having very early state script discussions and ideas of exactly where and how we’re going to drop anchor with the character and his journey and how he is or comes into contact with other characters, and the characters that we know and don’t know,” he said. “I would hate to say anything that’s going to commit us at this point, because it’s literally all up for grabs.”

Release Date

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum was originally scheduled for 2026, but since they’re still “at the beginning of the writing process,” the release date has been pushed back to December 2027. Also out that month: “Untitled Star Wars film” and “Untitled Warner Bros. Pictures family sequel.” I’m hearing strong Oscars buzz for “Untitled Warner Bros. Pictures family sequel.”