Count Frodo Baggins himself, Elijah Wood, among those who are excited about what Stephen Colbert has cooking in the world of Lord of the Rings. Wood was recently asked if he would be returning as Frodo in the upcoming film, which has the working title Shadow of the Past, and while he couldn’t quite confirm that, the actor implied he’d be open to it and had nothing but praise and hope for what the movie could be.
“I think the idea of telling the story of what happens in those six chapters is really exciting, and I think really exciting for fans,” Wood told The Direct. “And I think what Stephen and his son have crafted and what they’re working through is really rich and interesting, and it certainly includes all those characters. So, a script has to be written, we have to go through a process and read it, and it has to get a green light and all those things, but certainly in theory, yeah. And I’m beyond thrilled that it’s Stephen and his son doing it. It’s in the best Tolkien scholarly hands.”
For those who might need a refresher, earlier this year, former late-night host (and massive Lord of the Rings obsessive) Stephen Colbert was revealed to be co-writing a new Lord of the Rings movie for Warner Bros. That movie is inspired by several chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that didn’t make it into the Peter Jackson movie. Sam, Merry, and Pippin will revisit the early part of the journey as Sam’s daughter goes on her own adventure. Wood explained why those tales didn’t make it into the original films.
“The implication is that the stories that Stephen wants to tell, which are the six chapters that were not committed to film in Fellowship of the Ring, largely because they would have slowed the process of the journey down,” Wood said. “Because when [Frodo] leaves Bag End and the Shire, and he has to get to Bree, if it had gone the meandering way that it does in the books, it just would have taken a long time to get to Bree, and… it would have killed momentum.”
Wood is expected to return for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which Andy Serkis is directing and is set to be released in 2027. So whether he appears in Shadow of the Past or not, at least we’ll get to see Frodo some more soon.
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