Warner Bros. just announced that Stephen Colbert — the late-night comedian whose show was bleeding $50 million a year before CBS put it out of its misery — is going to co-write the next Lord of the Rings movie. His screenwriting experience? Zero produced screenplays. But sure, let’s hand him the keys to one of the most beloved franchises in human history because he once dressed up as Bilbo Baggins on his show.
Spectacular career pivot, Steve! Most of us would be updating our resumes on Indeed after getting canned on national television. Colbert gets a crack at Tolkien. Only in Hollywood does catastrophic failure count as a job interview.
The project is called *Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past*, and “Canceled Colbert” will be joined by his writing partner Peter McGee and veteran screenwriter Philippa Boyens. McGee’s most impressive credit is production work on *Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker* — you know, the movie that made millions of Star Wars fans hurl their popcorn at the screen and swear off the franchise forever.
(Nothing says “trust us with your beloved IP” like having the worst Star Wars movie on your résumé.)
So these are the geniuses Hollywood thinks should be writing J.R.R. Tolkien. A canceled talk show host and the kid who helped produce the movie that killed the Star Wars franchise. We’re in great hands, folks.
The announcement dropped on Tolkien Reading Day, which tells you everything about how these people think. Tolkien was a devout Catholic conservative who built Middle-earth on themes of absolute good versus absolute evil, the corruption of power, and the preservation of tradition. So naturally the entertainment industry looked at all that and said — actually, you know what, let me just write the meeting for you.
Studio executive, leaning back in a chair that costs more than your car: “We need someone who really *gets* Tolkien’s conservative Catholic vision of good and evil.”
Second executive, not looking up from his phone: “What about the guy who spent a decade calling half of America stupid on CBS?”
First executive: “Perfect. Get his agent on the phone.”
That’s how this happened. There is no other explanation.
And look — everyone already knows what’s coming. The news broke and within about five minutes “Sauron is Trump” was trending. Because of course it was. This is a man who called Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Trump “a big fat bribe” on air, three days before his bosses pulled the plug on his show. The guy is physically incapable of going eight minutes without making everything about Donald Trump. He’s going to have the Eye of Sauron wearing a red hat by the second act.
Colbert swears the movie will be “completely faithful to the books.”
Right. Just like Amazon’s *Rings of Power* was “faithful” when they invented characters Tolkien never created, turned Galadriel into a girlboss MMA fighter who could beat up entire armies by herself, and shoved a black elf into a world that Tolkien described in painstaking racial and ethnic detail across six appendices and twelve volumes of posthumous notes. (Tolkien is spinning in his grave so fast you could hook him up to a turbine and power all of Gondor.)
Speaking of that dumpster fire — Amazon’s *Rings of Power* Season 2 lost 60% of its audience compared to Season 1. Sixty percent! The show pulled a pathetic 39% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Amazon spent over $700 million just on production and rights before a single episode aired, and most viewers couldn’t even be bothered to finish watching it for free on a streaming service they were already paying for.
Seven hundred million bucks. Flushed. Gone. Up in flames like Denethor on a funeral pyre.
So what did Hollywood learn from that? Absolutely nothing. Their response was to go find a canceled late-night host with a presidential vendetta and hand him the screenplay.
Anyway — the plot reportedly follows Samwise Gamgee’s daughter Elanor discovering some “long-buried secret” about the War of the Ring. Fourteen years after Frodo sails to the Undying Lands, apparently there’s a huge mystery nobody noticed during the actual war. They’re inventing brand-new storylines for a character Tolkien mentioned in about three sentences across thousands of pages, but don’t worry — it’s “completely faithful.” Colbert said so himself.
Colbert did acknowledge his cancellation with a decent joke during the announcement. “It turns out I’m gonna be free starting this summer,” he laughed. Okay — credit where it’s due — at least the guy can take a punch. But you’d think a man whose show was hemorrhaging tens of millions a year might pump the brakes before taking on a project where audience rejection could cost a studio hundreds of millions more.
But wait — why would he care? It’s not his money. It’s never their money.
And here’s what drives you absolutely nuts about this whole thing. Peter Jackson already made the perfect Lord of the Rings movies. Three of them. Seventeen Oscars! Almost six billion dollars at the box office! Jackson respected the source material, the audience loved it, and everybody went home happy. Done. Finished. Walk away.
But Hollywood can’t leave anything alone. Hollywood sees a beloved franchise the way Gollum sees the One Ring — precious, mine, and worth destroying yourself over. Star Wars — dead. Marvel — who even watches those anymore? Doctor Who — so dead even the Brits stopped caring. Indiana Jones — Harrison Ford looked like he needed a hip replacement for the entire last movie. The Witcher — Henry Cavill literally quit rather than watch them butcher it.
Now they’re lining Tolkien up for another trip through the machine that turns beloved things into unwatchable garbage with a political agenda nobody asked for.
Colbert says he’s been obsessed with Tolkien since childhood. We don’t doubt it. Lots of us love Middle-earth. That doesn’t mean we should be writing the movies. I’ve loved pizza my entire life and nobody’s handing me a restaurant.
Mark my words — this thing ends with Sauron monologuing about “protecting our norms and institutions” while Aragorn kneels before the men of Harad to apologize for Gondor’s history of “harmful border policies.” They’ll probably make Sam’s daughter discover that the real Ring of Power was systemic oppression all along.
Enjoy the Shire while it lasts, folks. Hollywood’s coming for it, and they’re bringing their worst.