Despite Embracer’s repeated warnings, the world was shocked when last week a new Lord of the Rings movie was confirmed. Moreover, it was revealed that the new big-screen project is titled The Hunt for Gollum, and everyone started questioning who asked for this. Well, now we know that the pitch came from the filmmakers behind the six previous New Line-produced movies, actually.
Deadline’s in-depth article, which features quotes straight from Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis, and writer Philippa Boyens will put some minds at ease, yet it seems the Middle-earth veterans are now tied to a new wave of The Lord of the Rings projects they hadn’t thought about before.
Word on the street last week was that Embracer and Warner Bros. Discovery, in their seemingly endless search for bankable IPs to mine, had toyed with the idea of doing safe spinoffs and prequels that followed a younger Aragorn or Gandalf, among other famous names. “Gollum’s life span takes place in such an interesting period of Middle-earth. When the question was first asked, this was the first story we thought of. Because I can tell you, and people might not believe this, but we had zero expectations of going back to this. It wasn’t something we were looking to do, particularly,” Boyens explained.