New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Film Gets Official Release Date

The first live-action Lord of the Rings movie in over a decade has an official release date.

The movie is titled The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy, is directing and starring in the film. Jackson is involved as a producer.

Warner Bros. has set a release date for the new film in the holiday season of 2027. When it was first announced in the spring of 2024, it came with a projected release date of 2026. All of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were Christmas tentpoles as well.

The Hunt for Gollum will purportedly “explore storylines yet to be told” within the Lord of the Rings universe. In an interview with Empire, writer/producer Philippa Boyens called it “quite an intense story, which falls after the birthday party of Bilbo and before the Mines of Moria … “It’s a specific chunk of incredible untold story, told through the perspective of this incredible creature.”

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Despite the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien passed away more than 50 years ago, his works continue to be adapted or sequelized at a rare pace. Amazon is currently in the midst of producing a massive Lord of the Rings television series, The Rings of Power, while just last year, Warner Bros. released an animated Lord of the Rings prequel film called The War of the Rohirrim. (Unlike all of the live-action Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films released throughout the 21st century, that one was not a hit.)

The last live-action LOTR films were Jackson’s trilogy of The Hobbit movies, which opened in theaters in in December 2012, 2013, and 2014, and grossed $2.91 billion worldwide.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is now scheduled to open in theaters on December 17, 2027.