A 70-year-old replica of Aragorn could well give Andy Serkis a hard time for his film Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum. The director faces a real challenge in adapting his vile creature’s Middle-earth road trip.
The Hunt For Gollum, The Mysterious Journey of Gollum
After donning the Gollum costume, Andy Serkis will also move to the other side of the camera to direct The Hunt for Gollum in 2026, the next film dedicated to the universe of Lord of the Rings after the animated feature film The Rohirrim Warmeanwhile directed by Kenji Kamiyama, and showing in our cinemas on December 11, 2024.
While the story surrounding the film produced by Peter Jackson remains unclear, its title remains quite evocative. Peter Jackson revealed shortly before the summer that the film will focus at length on the dual personality of Sméagol/Gollum and his still unclear journey. “We really want to explore his story and dive into the little-known parts of his journey. Something we haven’t had time to do in the previous films. It’s too early to know who he’s going to cross paths with, but suffice it to say that we’ll be taking a page from Professor Tolkien.”
a risky adaptation
If the precise synopsis is not revealed, this “Gollum’s Trail” must cover a nebulous period of about 18 yearsfrom Aragorn’s charge by Gandalf to watch over the former Hobbit, to his capture in the Marsh of the Dead in 3017 and his captivity with Thranduil, the king of the Wood Elves. In the meantime, we know that Gollum is captured and released in Mordor, and that Aragron travels various places in Middle-earth to find his prey.
More the information remains very meager, however, Tolkien did not elaborate on the character’s road trip in his writings. The material available to the writers is a series of dates reported in the appendices as well as conversations between Gandalf and Aragorn. The latter then tells the magician that he has found the trace of the creature named Gollum, but rather than evoking a hunt for all dangers, he finally reveals a tedious and desperate journey. “I too ended up despairing, and I began my return journey (…) I never got anything from his mouth other than the mark of his teeth (…) the worst part of my journey was in my opinion the way back, watching him day and night, making him walk in front of me, a rope around his neck, a gag over his mouth”he wrote to his ally.
These are, in short, the only concrete elements on which Warner can rely to put its story into images. And this could pose a problem, when we take a look at what Prime Video is doing with The Rings of Power. The platform based its story on Tolkien’s notes and appendices. And it’s clear that even season 2 fails to meet fans’ expectations. Showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have not been able to demonstrate enough inventiveness to continue the work of the British novelist while honoring him.
A heavy task that will fall to Warner Bros. But with Andy Serkis behind the camera as a passionate, combined with the eye and experience of Peter Jackson in production, we hope that the result will be there. The possible returns of Ian McKellen as Gandalf, d’Orlando Bloom en Legolasor even Viggo Mortensen as the Northern Ranger, would be a great help to the credibility of such a project, which is rather risky at the moment.
