Peter Jackson Says Colbert’s Lord of the Rings Pitch Came Before CBS Cancellation

So, it turns out Stephen Colbert didn’t cold-call Peter Jackson in a panic after losing his show. The pitch came first.

Speaking to Variety at the Cannes Film Festival — where Jackson was honored with a Palme d’Or on opening night — the director confirmed that Colbert reached out roughly a year ago, well before CBS pulled the plug on The Late Show. “He phoned me up a year ago — before he knew his show was going to finish — and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’ve got an idea for a Tolkien movie based on the books that I think would be really good,'” Jackson told the publication.

Jackson was impressed enough to connect Colbert with Philippa Boyens, his longtime collaborator who co-wrote both the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. The two spent the following year developing a full treatment — with Colbert even traveling to New Zealand to work alongside the team.

The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past

Then, mid-process, CBS canceled The Late Show, with the final episode set to air on 21 May 2026. Jackson said the decision wasn’t what the show or Colbert deserved, but acknowledged that having a massive creative project already in motion helped. “I think Stephen’s actually really happy — I think it helped him process [something that] was rather shocking,” he said. “So it was like, okay, one day he’s going to be a late-night talk show host, and the next day he’s going to be a Tolkien scriptwriter.”

The film carries the working title The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past and is co-written by Colbert, his son Peter McGee, and Boyens. According to Fiction Horizon, Colbert’s script draws from six early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that Jackson’s original trilogy left untouched — the stretch running from “Three Is Company” through “Fog on the Barrow-downs,” which includes Tom Bombadil, the Barrow-wight, and Old Man Willow. Tolkien fans who have been waiting twenty-plus years for Bombadil to get his due on screen are either very excited or very nervous about this.

The official logline sets the story fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, following Sam, Merry, and Pippin as they retrace the first steps of their original adventure, while Sam’s daughter Elanor uncovers a long-buried secret about how the War of the Ring very nearly fell apart before it began.

This is Colbert’s first proper foray into blockbuster development, though he’s no stranger to Middle-earth. He had a small role in 2013’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and later directed Jackson alongside Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, and Elijah Wood in the 2019 short film Darrylgorn, set in Middle-earth. The man has clearly been angling for this for a while.

Shadows of the Past will follow Andy Serkis‘ The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is set for a UK theatrical release on 17 December 2027. No release window for the Colbert-written film has been announced yet.

We’ll keep you posted on updates about The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past as the project develops.