Freshly lauded Cannes Palme d’Or honoree Peter Jackson tells us that Stephen Colbert’s attachment as writer on a new Lord of the Rings movie (getting released after 2027’s Hunt for Gollum) occurred when The Late Show host pitched himself for the gig.
“He was re-reading Lord of the Rings over Christmas and thought this section would make a great film,” Jackson tells us at Cannes.
“He pitched this whole idea…I said it sounds interesting, let’s have a go at this, doing a treatment. Philippa Boyens flew over and Colbert has come down to New Zealand a couple of times.”
“This is before he knew his show was going to get canned.”
“It’s a part of Lord of the Rings that we never filmed. There were these big chunks of Lord of the Rings that we skipped over,” says the 3x Oscar winner.
The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is based the section “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, where the Hobbits are trapped by a Barrow-wight in an unnatural fog. The story also includes a fan favorite character omitted from the previous films, Tom Bombadil. The feature is being adapted from chapters three through eight of Tolkien’s book.
“Next week, he’s doing his final show and the next day he’ll be a Tolkien screenwriter,” said Jackson about Colbert.
In addition, in our video chat above, Jackson expounds on the progress of the new Tintin film he’s directing, and shares some Cannes war stories about that time he got in trouble with festival security for wearing shorts.
The Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD
