The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is only the beginning of our cinematic return to The Lord of the Rings‘ cinematic universe, as imagined by Peter Jackson. Up next, we’ll be getting The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, a highly anticipated new entry into The Lord of the Rings‘ world. In celebration of The War of the Rohirrim, Philippa Boyens, a writer on the movie, also chatted to us about the status of The Hunt for Gollum and teased some of the plot points and The Lord of the Rings mysteries it might go into.
When asked about The Hunt for Gollum, here’s what Boyens had to say about the upcoming The Lord of the Rings film.
We are actually, as I speak to you, we’re in the midst of writing The Hunt for Gollum. It’s actually been a lot of fun. It’s really interesting. It’s in bits and pieces at the moment, just so you know. It’s spread out literally over my dining table. But it’s interesting how much story is left to be told, which is number one. And two, when you excavate some of those moments, when you go into them, because it’s a few lines that Professor Tolkien provides us with, or a few clues that he provides us with in the text. And when you go into them, it’s like, we know Aragorn/Strider captures Gollum in the Dead Marshes. How does he pick up his scent? How does he find his trail, how does it happen? Do you know? I don’t know at the moment.
We don’t know ourselves, but we promised Boyens we’d have a think. But if you know, it might be a good time to share your ideas with the class. We love the thought of The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum spread all over Boyens’ dining table, though. The process of putting together a new The Lord of the Rings movie sounds like a ton of fun. And we love even more hearing a tease of some of the moments and plot we’ll revisit in the film. Sign us up for more Aragorn, especially in his Strider form. We just didn’t get enough of that in the original The Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy, so it’s fun to imagine we might see a few new scenes of Aragorn in his fully Ranger form in The Hunt for Gollum.
This The Hunt for Gollum tease is also an interesting one because it focuses us in on at least one time period that the new The Lord of the Rings movie will explore. Of course, it makes sense that some of The Hunt for Gollum might take place during the time period after his torture in Mordor and before Aragorn finds him (when Gandalf and Aragorn are, as they say, hunting for him). But that hadn’t been explicitly confirmed. Of course, the movie is in early stages and things could still change, but knowing we’ll explore the time when Aragorn captures Gollum and takes him to Mirkwood (not too much before The Fellowship of the Ring forms) is definitely interesting to note.
We also very much enjoy the thought of The Hunt for Gollum filling in new pieces of The Lord of the Rings lore where canon left question marks, that’s the mark of a great adaptation in our opinion.
In previous, Boyens shared of The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, “Gollum’s story is one of the most compelling to us in terms of a character that we couldn’t go as deeply into as we wanted to before, which sounds strange when you say that, given how familiar he is to everybody. Gollum’s life span takes place in such an interesting period of Middle-earth. When the question was first asked, this was the first story we thought of. Because I can tell you, and people might not believe this, but we had zero expectations of going back to this. It wasn’t something we were looking to do, particularly. So when the question was asked, it was, what would draw you back? And it was about working with the people we we’re working with. It was also about the chance to work with Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy at the studio. Alan Horn is now back at the studio. It just felt right.”
We can’t wait to hear more about the new The Lord of the Rings movie as it comes to life.
