Mashing the IP Button Until It's the 2000s Again

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for More Money

In retrospect, the 2000s were a lucrative time for Warner Bros. They had Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings running. Not only were these franchises, but arguably respectable franchises because they were based off of acclaimed and popular novels rather than toys or theme park rides (even though we now know that you can get good movies out of both of those things). Warner Bros. has been chasing that high ever since to diminishing returns. Both franchises received prequel trilogies with The Hobbit existing as an awkward amalgam of the seriousness of Lord of the Rings now thrust into the more child-friendly (and far shorter) narrative of The Hobbit, and the Fantastic Beasts series that was originally going to be five films before the studio decided to cuts its losses and wrap up the misbegotten Harry Potter prequels after three entries.

While Fantastic Beasts struggled at the box office, The Hobbit, for all its faults, was a box office hit for Warner Bros., and they’ve been trying to figure out new ways to adapt the series. Later this year, we’ll get The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an animated movie that tells the story of Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Brian Cox) and the original battle of Helm’s Deep. That’s a good idea! It’s a self-contained story, and it’s animated, so it has an identity separate from the other Lord of the Rings movies.

A less thrilling idea is what The Hollywood Reporter shared this morning, which is that Peter Jackson is producing and on the early stages of scripting a new Lord of the Rings movie, which has the working title The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Andy Serkis will reprise his role as the tragic title character as well as direct.

Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | Image via New Line Cinema