Published Jun 15, 2026, 3:01 PM EDT
Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.
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While the Lord of the Rings franchise’s upcoming comeback is exciting for existing fans, it also marks the start of a whole new era for one of the fantasy genre’s biggest series. It is a pretty great time to be a fantasy fan in the 2020s. While some big-budget fantasy franchise reboots might be struggling on the big screen, as evidenced by 2026’s Masters of the Universe and 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, small-screen fantasy has never been healthier.
Seven years after HBO’s original George R.R. Martin adaptation, Game of Thrones, ended, its first spinoff, House of the Dragon, is heading for a hotly anticipated third season while its second spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, has already been renewed for two more outings. Prime Video’s Critical Role show The Legend of Vox Machina proves the streaming service is out to offer its own version of Game of Thrones, while its even more popular fantasy hit is heading into its biggest season yet.
Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings spinoff, The Rings of Power, will be bigger than ever in season 3 as the show finally explores the wars that shaped Middle-earth’s history in detail. However, this isn’t the only exciting development in the franchise’s screen story. The announcement of 2027’s upcoming The Hunt for Gollum marks the first live-action theatrical feature release in the Lord of the Rings franchise since director Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy wrapped up with 2014’s epic The Battle of the Five Armies.
New The Lord of the Rings Movies Aren't Directed By Peter Jackson
Famous/ACE PICTURES/INSTARimages.comWhile it is exciting to see that the Lord of the Rings franchise will return to screens soon, this news comes with more than a few notes for longtime fans. For one thing, The Hunt for Gollum won’t be directed by Jackson, who is busy with the long-awaited sequel to 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin. Even though Jackson directed both the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, The Hunt for Gollum will instead be directed by Andy Serkis.
As a longtime J.R.R Tolkien superfan and Gollum’s original award-winning voice actor, Serkis is a great fit for the franchise. That said, the series will still struggle to replace Jackson, whose direction elevated the original Lord of the Rings trilogy to instant classic status. Since The Hobbit trilogy earned a much more mixed critical reception, Jackson’s absence from the directing chair could be seen as a blessing by some fans. However, The Hunt for Gollum’s big change remains a risk either way.
Only Some Of The Iconic Cast Is Returning For The Lord of the Rings' New Movies
To make things more complicated, The Hunt for Gollum will neither reunite the cast of the earlier movies, nor will they be entirely absent. According to early reports, alumni from the earlier movies like Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, and Lee Pace will all return for The Hunt for Gollum, but these familiar faces will be joined by newcomers like Jamie Dornan, Kate Winslet, and Leo Woodall. To make matters more complicated, Dornan will play a younger version of Viggo Mortensen’s iconic Aragorn, but McKellen and Wood will reprise their roles.
This technically makes sense in-universe, since hobbits and wizards don’t age in the same way that humans do. However, while Serkis bringing back Among Us star Wood and screen veteran McKellen is exciting, it is hard to know whether these returning stars will outshine the franchise’s new actors. Furthermore, it could feel jarring to see Dornan’s new version of Aragorn interact with existing takes on Gandalf and Frodo.
The Lord of the Rings' New Movies Are Based On Smaller Side Stories
The Hunt for Gollum has another major stumbling block to overcome since, as implied by its title, the movie is based on a side story from the franchise’s sprawling mythos rather than one of Tolkien’s main texts. In many ways, this might be a good thing, as it means Serkis’s spinoff won’t retread existing material covered by the two earlier trilogies. However, this could also mean that the new movie won’t have a substantial enough story to maintain its runtime.
Since HBO’s Harry Potter series has already been heavily criticized for simply revisiting the existing story of the earlier movies in the fantasy franchise instead of treading new ground, The Hunt for Gollum’s approach does seem like the smarter idea. With a Tolkien lover like Serkis at the helm, this spinoff movie could feel like an expansion of the franchise’s existing universe rather than an unnecessary nostalgic cash-in.
The Lord of the Rings' New Era Of Movies Could Last A Long Time
Following the production of The Hunt for Gollum, a second live-action feature film from the Lord of the Rings franchise, Shadow of the Past, is also planned. With a script from Stephen Colbert, Philippa Boyens, and Peter McGee, Shadow of the Past jumps forward in the franchise’s timeline to pick up after Frodo's death as his friends retrace his journey years later. If these two movies prove successful, there is plenty of Tolkien material to adapt for the franchise going forward.
This would mean that The Rings of Power will no longer be the only live-action Lord of the Rings project in production, which could be great news for fantasy fans more broadly. The success of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon proves the Game of Thrones franchise can sustain more than one project simultaneously, and Tolkien’s Middle-Earth lore makes the scope of Martin’s fictional world feel small.
That said, the potential success of both movies is a big “If.” Serkis’s The Hunt for Gollum must convince audiences that it is more than mere fan fiction, which might be hard with a smaller-scale story and a cast that mixes returning franchise favorites with some new faces playing established characters. Meanwhile, although Shadow of the Past can reunite some of the original trilogy’s stars, its story is even smaller in the grand scheme of the epic franchise.
Related
It's Officially The End Of An Era For The Rings Of Power
After Prime Video's prequel series spent years as the only current Lord of the Rings project, The Rings of Power is about to change forever soon.
For these two movies to succeed, the franchise will need to change what viewers expect from the series, moving away from the epic scale of the original trilogies and toward something subtler and more intimate. If the new Lord of the Rings movies can pull this off, then the sky is the limit for the fantasy franchise’s future.
Created by J.R.R. Tolkien
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