The Hunt for Gollum Will Ruin Tolkien's Heritage Just Like The Rings of Power Did

Warner Bros. has announced new movies in the Lord of the Rings universe. The anime The War of the Rohirrim will be released later this year, and the main course is being prepared for 2026: the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Andy Serkis will return to the role of Gollum, Peter Jackson will produce, and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who worked on both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, are among the screenwriters.

Does that sound like the biggest announcement of the year? No, it sounds like the biggest disappointment for fans of Tolkien and the original trilogy.

Who Asked For a Standalone Gollum Story on Big Screen?

It's not hard to understand why the new movie is built around Gollum – from a production standpoint. Gollum is the only central character in LOTR who hasn't aged in 20 years. Serkis can still play him, no matter how much the actor himself has changed over the years.

But why build a movie around Gollum from a plot standpoint? Was anyone in the world really dreaming of a solo movie about this character (spoiler: no)? Yes, he has an interesting biography – but it was almost completely revealed in two movie trilogies.

There is no intrigue in this story – we already know how it will end. There is nothing epic about it, it will not reveal unexplored parts of the world or another era. Worse, the Hunt for Gollum has already been done on screen.

In 2009, British Tolkienists released a surprisingly high-quality half-hour fan film of the same name. Serkis' version will inevitably look like its extended and more expensive remake.

Peter Jackson is Only a Producer

Peter Jackson's Middle-earth is a special universe you want to return to. This is a unique trilogy of films, in which everything came together and which, even twenty years later, still amazes with its scope.

Jackson's Lord of the Rings is a relic that many Tolkien fans have carried in their hearts for many years, and the height that condemns all future adaptations to inevitable comparison.

But at the same time, even The Hobbit, which has received its fair share of criticism, remains a worthy story to be seen in one breath, even if it lacks the charm of the original trilogy.

What connects these two trilogies? They were both directed by Peter Jackson.

Jackson will not be the director of the new film – he is only a producer. Once before, Peter tried to go into the shadows and leave the work of the director to another person, keeping the rest of the same team.

This was during the creation of the movie Mortal Engines – and the project turned out to be a big box office failure. It seems that the studio needs Jackson as a symbol so that the new movie can be marketed as "from the creator of The Lord of the Rings."

Andy Serkis is a Brilliant Actor, But a Not-So-Brilliant Director

Andy Serkis is a great actor who has created a whole new profession: acting with digital makeup. His Gollum, King Kong and chimp Caesar are real, living characters thanks to his acting. And his participation in The Hunt for Gollum is the main reason to wait for the movie. But only his participation as an actor, not as a director.

This is not Serkis' debut as a director – Andy has already directed three feature films. The melodrama Breathe (you probably haven't seen it), Mowgli (the controversial 2018 version), and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Do We Really Need The Hunt for Gollum?

We can say for sure that The Hunt for Gollum will at least be of high quality. The talented actor Serkis, the views of New Zealand, the script is written by experienced screenwriters, and Jackson is taking care of them all. It is unlikely that these people will ruin everything, as happened with the fifth and sixth installments of Terminator and the fourth Matrix.

But it seems that The Lord of the Rings is unfortunately turning into a typical modern franchise which is not based on the idea, but on bringing money when the studio tries to turn grains of epic story to which it owns the rights into a story of its own. Something Tolkien himself never wanted.