Ian McKellen is putting on the pointy hat one more time. The 85-year-old actor confirmed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that he'll reprise Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, with filming starting in July.
"Yes, I put on the pointy hat and the beard and the nose and the eyebrows and the mustache," McKellen told Colbert, before expressing mild concern about shooting during New Zealand's winter: "the wind and the rain."
Directed by and starring Andy Serkis as Gollum, the film will explore the 17-year period between Bilbo leaving the Shire and the Fellowship's formation—essentially filling in narrative gaps that J.R.R. Tolkien left vague and Peter Jackson wisely skipped over.
Which raises the obvious question: does anyone actually want this?
Look, I love McKellen's Gandalf as much as anyone who's watched the extended editions annually since 2003. But Middle-earth is starting to feel less like a beloved literary universe and more like IP being strip-mined for content. Amazon's Rings of Power has already demonstrated that enormous budgets and Tolkien's name don't automatically equal compelling television.
According to reports, Elijah Wood may return as Frodo, and Viggo Mortensen has expressed interest in reprising Aragorn. That's lovely for nostalgia, but these are actors in their 40s and 60s playing characters who should be younger or unchanged. The de-aging CGI required will be either expensive or distracting—probably both.
The film is set for December 17, 2027, which gives and his team plenty of time to figure out how to justify this movie's existence beyond
