While it’s certainly too early to know for sure if David Ellison is employing the same vindictive tactics as his orange pal in the White House, this news won’t assuage anyone of their fears. Just when Stephen Colbert thought he was out, he’s been pulled back in. Knight Edge Media reports that Ellison has pumped the brakes on Colbert’s Lord of the Rings movie, Shadows of the Past, now that the Paramount/WB merger is complete.
According to the report, Ellison doesn’t see Lord of the Rings as profitable as it once was, and wants to see how Andy Serkis’ The Hunt for Gollum performs before launching anything else. That’s fair. The recent animated movie, The War of the Rohirrim, bombed with just $20M in 2024.
Ellison infamously fired Colbert from The Late Show, largely to appease the whining diaper baby who calls himself President. Now Colbert finds himself at Ellison’s whims again. The optics on this are pretty terrible. Would anyone be shocked if they learned Trump had demanded Ellison drop Colbert’s movie? Me neither.
At least it’s too late for Ellison to put a halt to The Hunt for Gollum as it’s mostly completed. That said, Serkis has another LOTR film in the works and the status of that is unclear.
We learned earlier this year from Peter Jackson that Colbert had been working on a LOTR screenplay for a couple of years with his son, Peter McGee, and franchise vet Philippa Boyens.
The synopsis for Shadows of the Past: “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo – Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”
