Summary

Lord of the Rings
is making a comeback with new films, starting with
The War of the Rohirrim
in December.

The Hunt for Gollum
will be the first live-action movie post-
The Hobbit
, directed by Andy Serkis.
Warner Bros. is building a wider
LOTR
franchise, hoping to follow the success of
Star Wars
with new films.

The Lord of the Rings is gearing up for a major re-emergence in the cinematic landscape. With the first new film in the series in a decade, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, set to open this December, the franchise is just getting started. That film is an animated feature that has been in development for a long while now, but last year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced their intent to expand this return to Middle-Earth. The first live-action film to come from this renewed effort has just been set for release in 2026.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will be the first new live-action Lord of the Rings movie to be released since The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies opened in December 2014. While it does follow the live-action streaming series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, on Prime Video, Amazon’s take on Tolkien exists in an entirely separate continuity from WB and New Line Cinema’s iconic Lord of the Rings film franchise. The Hunt for Gollum will also be the first official live-action film adaptation of Tolkien not to be directed by Peter Jackson. While some may find that a cause for concern, Andy Serkis has stepped up to the plate to take a swing at it. Here’s why he’s the perfect director for this new Lord of the Rings movie.

Andy Serkis’ History With The Lord of the Rings

It’s no secret that Andy Serkis has a long history with the Lord of the Rings franchise. In many ways, he owes his career to it. The actor first joined the franchise with Jackson’s trilogy of films in the early 2000s, in which he played the role of Gollum. In this role, Serkis became a pioneer in the realm of motion-capture performances, as his character was entirely digital but still wholly based on the performance that he physically gave on set and on sound stages. This incredible work from Serkis (and the amazing VFX crew on the films) made Gollum one of the most impressive aspects of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. It also established Serkis as a mo-cap expert, which he has continued to prove with films like 2005’s King Kong, the Planet of the Apes trilogy in the 2010s, and Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi.

Serkis had already returned to Middle-Earth once before, as he reprised the role of Gollum in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first film of Jackson’s trilogy of films based on The Hobbit. While this was a single, extended sequence in just one movie, it also saw Serkis giving one of his best performances in the role to date, making for one of the most memorable scenes in the entire Hobbit trilogy. However, Serkis’ role in the Hobbit films doesn’t end there. He also embraced a larger role behind the scenes, as Jackson entrusted Serkis as the second unit director on all three Hobbit movies. This saw Serkis step into a much more crucial creative role in the development of Tolkien’s world on-screen, and it was a responsibility he took very seriously.

Related There’s a War Over the LOTR Franchise Between Amazon and WB With Season 2 of The Rings of Power imminent and The War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum set to hit theaters soon, Amazon and WB are at war.

Since the last Hobbit movie hit theaters back in 2014, Serkis has continued to stay involved with The Lord of the Rings. In addition to his continuous promotion of the material through a variety of convention appearances and other events, Serkis has also narrated complete audiobooks for five of Tolkien’s novels. This includes all three Lord of the Rings books, as well as The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. In total, across these five audiobooks, Serkis has delivered over 95 hours of material, providing different performances for every character and bringing Tolkien’s incredible writing to life in exceptional fashion.

Peter Jackson Believes Serkis Is the Best Choice

Stepping into the director role for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, Serkis also has the added benefit of the most crucial endorsement he could need: Peter Jackson. Much of the same creative team behind both the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films are returning for The Hunt for Gollum, as Jackson is on board as a producer, and his co-writers Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh are also working on the script for this new film. All of them believe that Serkis is exactly the right person to bring this story to life, and they began developing this film with the hopes that Serkis would be the director behind it.

When speaking to Deadline about the film, Jackson said, “Andy was a joy to work with directing Second Unit on The Hobbit. He has the energy and imagination and, most importantly, an inherent understanding of the world of the story that is needed to step back into Middle-earth. We have collaborated on eight films together and each time it has been a fantastic experience. There’s no one on this earth better equipped to tackle Gollum’s story than Andy.” Boyens echoed many of these sentiments, adding, “It was never about, why Andy? It was like, please, God, let Andy say yes.”

2:03 Related Ranking Every Animated Lord of the Rings Film Ahead of The War of the Rohirrim The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will be the fourth major animated LOTR film, following a spree of Tolkien movies in the ’70s and ’80s.

The Hunt for Gollum will be far from the first feature film that Serkis has directed. After his second unit work on The Hobbit, Serkis directed various films ranging from low-budget dramas to high-budget blockbusters. His major directorial debut was the 2017 drama Breathe, starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, which he then followed with a book-accurate adaptation of The Jungle Book, titled Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. Most recently, he helmed the insanely over-the-top Venom sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and he has recently wrapped production on an animated film adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

WB Is Building LOTR Into a Wider Franchise

Warner Bros. is developing The Hunt for Gollum with the hopes that it will serve as a grand reintroduction of live-action Lord of the Rings stories into the modern cinematic landscape. Last year, they specifically stated that they hoped to revive The Lord of the Rings and turn it into a franchise similar to what Disney has done with Star Wars. This means that a variety of new films, ranging from prequels to sequels and spin-offs, would be entering development with the intent of releasing in the coming years.

This approach is already clear to see in their current release slate. The War of the Rohirrim is up first, an animated film that tells a very isolated and standalone story about a King of Rohan (Helm Hammerhand, voiced by Brian Cox) about 200 years before The Lord of the Rings. With The Hunt for Gollum following in 2026, WB continues down the prequel route with a story set immediately before The Fellowship of the Ring. Amid the same announcement in which The Hunt for Gollum was unveiled, WB also confirmed that another live-action Lord of the Rings film is also in active development. However, no specific details about it could be announced just yet.

If WB wants this new era of Middle-Earth films to be successful, bringing back the same creative team that worked on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies is a very smart move. Having Jackson, Boyens, and Walsh working on these films is a much-needed signal of competence behind the scenes. Serkis has been another major creative force behind The Lord of the Rings over the last 25 years, and bringing him on board to direct The Hunt for Gollum is a choice that is so perfect that it’s hard to imagine anyone could be a better fit than him. While some fans still aren’t sold by the idea behind the Hunt for Gollum movie, this new film is in the best creative hands it could possibly be in, which is reason for some optimism at the very least. Stream The Lord of the Rings on Max.