Are you ready to return to Middle-earth?
In 2024, Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis announced they would be returning to the Lord of the Rings saga with a film titled The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Jackson will be producing alongside his fellow LOTR and The Hobbit producers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, while Serkis will direct in addition to reprising his role as Gollum via motion capture.
The film is currently in pre-production, and everyone is hungry for updates – including, as it turns out, Serkis’s own Lord of the Rings castmates.
“Andy, how’s the film coming on?” John Rhys-Davies cheekily asked during the Lord of the Rings reunion panel at C2E2 2025.
“The new film? Which new film?” Serkis coyly answered. “Not the Hunt for Gollum film. Do you want me to tell you what it’s all about? I can tell you the whole story,” he continued, before saying there would be no spoilers.
“It’s going really well. It’s very exciting. We’re sort of just writing at the moment. It’s all coming together. We’ll start prepping fairly soon, and then we’re off to the races,” Serkis revealed. The movie is being written by Walsh and Boyens, as well as Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, who also worked on the 2024 animated feature Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim.
“I feel like we have a front row seat, because, weren’t we in Brussels? We were at dinner, and you were just starting it, and now it’s coming together,” Sean Astin said to Serkis. Oh, to have been at that dinner…!
Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is expected to hit theaters December 2027.
Popverse members can watch There and Back Again: A Lord of the Rings Cast Reunion from C2E2 2025’s Main Stage powered by CGC x JSA for yourself as part of Popverse’s all-encompassing coverage of C2E2 2025.