Sir Ian McKellen has become the primary source for updates on the Lord of the Rings franchise, but not every announcement from the actor is a welcome one.
McKellen, famous for playing Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, is keen to return to Middle-earth. He may get his chance with the tentatively titled Hunt for Gollum, a prequel to Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring. Though the story isn’t set in stone yet, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum could usher in a new era of Tolkien films. Warner Bros. and its creative partner, the video game juggernaut Embracer Group, are hoping to develop a handful of new stories set in Middle-earth, and a new update from McKellen suggests that the studios are putting a lot of faith —perhaps too much faith — into the film set to kick it all off.
In an interview with This Morning, McKellen revealed that The Hunt for Gollum won’t be a one-off prequel. “I’m told it’s two films,” the actor said. “I probably shouldn’t be saying that, but I haven’t read the script, and I don’t know when it is, and I don’t even know where it’ll be filmed.”
So many pieces still need to fall into place here, so there’s a chance McKellen doesn’t know the full story. Still, this wouldn’t be the first time that Peter Jackson was tasked with stretching a slim story into multiple movies. If McKellen’s intel is accurate, the Lord of the Rings franchise could be repeating a major mistake, which could foil Warners’ plans for a revival before it can even properly begin.
While Jackson’s first Lord of the Rings trilogy was a critical and commercial slam dunk, the same can’t be said for the prequels that followed it. Over 10 years after Fellowship, Jackson returned to the franchise to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which comes before Fellowship on the timeline. But unlike the three LOTR films, which each corresponded to one of Tolkien’s novels, Jackson saw fit to split one 300-page book into three films.
The movies compensated by conjuring up additional subplots and characters, which naturally earned the ire of Tolkien loyalists everywhere. Even if you weren’t a lorehound, each addition derailed the story’s momentum, turning what might have been a single lean adventure into a bloated, meandering mess.
A decade on, the Hobbit films are a blip many Tolkien fans would rather forget. One would hope that Warner Bros. learned its lesson from the films’ critical reception, which was mixed at best. As the trilogy was a box office hit, however, the studio seems fine with pushing its luck again.
That The Hunt for Gollum could follow in The Hobbit trilogy’s footsteps is, unfortunately, more of a disappointment than a surprise. The films will be taking an even slimmer piece of lore from the Tolkien mythos and stretching it beyond its limits, which can’t be making fans optimistic. Given the talent involved, there’s a chance the new films could somehow subvert expectations and deliver a worthwhile story. But for now, it’s difficult to see how The Hunt for Gollum can justify this return to Middle-earth.
