Andy Serkis says The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is not being made as a museum piece. The actor and director says the prequel will stand on its own when it arrives between The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings, even as it follows Gandalf and Aragorn’s search for Gollum in the run-up to the War of the Ring.
“The joy of [The Hunt for Gollum] is that it’s entirely its own story, but it fits perfectly into the lore, the tone, the feel of the Middle-earth films that were created by Peter Jackson 25 years ago,” Serkis said in comments ahead of production in New Zealand. He said the film is “not just a nostalgia film,” adding that it “adheres to that world, but it certainly has a freshness and a newness in terms of the actual story.”
The weight behind the project is simple: Warner Bros. is turning again to Middle-earth at a moment when the studio is trying to widen the franchise beyond the familiar path of the original films. The Hunt for Gollum will bring back Serkis, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood and Lee Pace, while Kate Winslet and Leo Woodall join as Marigol and Halvard, two characters not named in Tolkien’s novels or the earlier films. Woodall’s casting was first revealed in a separate report on the project, and the addition underlines how far this film is willing to move from pure remake territory.
Serkis said the film’s version of Aragorn is not the one audiences remember from Peter Jackson’s trilogy. “We’re calling him Strider in our movie,” he said. “He is at a different point in his journey, so he is slightly different to the Aragorn that we see later on.” That version, he said, is “out in the wilderness as a Dúnedain Ranger,” and he added that Jamie Dornan is “perfect for this part of the journey of the character.” Viggo Mortensen will not return, with Dornan taking over the role in what Serkis described as a different stage of Aragorn’s life.
That creative pitch matters because the hunt itself is already part of Tolkien’s text. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about the search for Gollum in The Fellowship of the Ring and in the trilogy’s Appendices, and Jackson’s films only briefly mention it. On March 25, Warner Bros. also announced The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, another Lord of the Rings sequel written by Philippa Boyens, Stephen Colbert and Peter McGee. With The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim released in 2025, the studio is clearly building a broader Middle-earth slate.
The question now is whether the film can do what Serkis is promising: use the weight of the old movies without being trapped by them. If it lands, The Hunt for Gollum could show that Middle-earth still has room for new stories, not just new versions of the same one.
