An Emmy winner is making his way to Middle Earth. As part of the year-long festivities celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson has confirmed a new Tolkien film is in development. Jackson confirmed that Stephen Colbert is developing the script for a new Middle Earth film with the working title The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past. The synopsis 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.”

According to Colbert, the film will be based on six chapters that weren’t adapted in The Fellowship of the Ring: Three Is Company, A Short Cut to Mushrooms, A Conspiracy Unmasked, The Old Forest, In the House of Tom Bombadil, and Fog on the Barrow-Downs. An avid Tolkien fan, Stephen Colbert is best known for his late-night shows, The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which won him a collective 12 Emmy Awards. Colbert is writing the screenplay for Shadow of the Past with his son Peter McGee and Tolkien veteran Philippa Boyens. Shadow of the Past is expected to go into production after the upcoming film The Hunt for Gollum, which will be directed by Andy Serkis and is scheduled for release on December 17th, 2027.