Warner Bros. will release The Hunt for Gollum late next year, and Viggo Mortensen will not be back as Aragorn. Jamie Dornan has been cast in the role instead, a change that landed a few weeks before director and star Andy Serkis spoke publicly about the recasting.
Serkis, who is directing and starring in the film as Gollum, said on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast that he did not want to say too much yet. “I really don’t want to go into it right now because I want to save it… We’re thrilled Jamie’s [Dornan] doing it. I mean, we’re thrilled. And, by the way, so is Viggo,” he said.
The casting update matters because Aragorn is one of the central figures in the live-action version of Tolkien’s world, and his return had been one of the key questions around the new film. Elijah Wood is also set to return as Frodo Baggins, and Ian McKellen will play Gandalf again, giving the project a mix of familiar names and a notable new face in Dornan.
The franchise has been off live-action theater screens for years, even as Prime Video has kept it active with two seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and another season on the way. Warner Bros. also returned to theaters at the end of 2024 with The War of the Rohirrim, an animated release that grossed $30 million and drew middling reviews.
Produced by Peter Jackson, The Hunt for Gollum is set to arrive into a marketplace that already knows the scale of the property and the demand for it. The recasting of Aragorn closes one of the biggest open questions around the film before release, and it leaves Dornan carrying a part that has long been associated with Mortensen when Warner Bros. brings the story to theaters late next year.