Colbert RePours Some Tea

Even if you don’t watch late-night talk shows, you’re probably aware of what went down between the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and CBS. This article by PBS News written by Alicia Rancilio and Andrew Dalton of the Associated Press back in July 2025, talks about broadcasting mega corporation cancelling Colberts show if you’re not familiar with the story. Just like news about the direction a river flows, I try to talk about current events. Get it? Currtent? I’m sorry. I’ll get back to the news.

Stephen Colbert behind his Late Show desk. Picture courtesy of The New Yorker.

Colbert is a well known Lord of the Rings superfan and his next venture takes place in Middle-earth. Late Night with Stephen Colbert will air its final episode on May 21st 2026 and it will be the end of a 33 year era. But as soon as that ends, and maybe Colbert takes a much needed break, he’ll get started on a movie that has the tentative title of The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past. This is all according to an article by Ian Youngs from the BBC (read that article here.)

This film is set to tell the stories of chapters 3 to 8 of the Fellowship of the Rings but told in a flashback style. The official film synopsis says:

“Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”

From left to right: Sean Astin as Sam, Elijah Wood as Frodo, Billy Boyd as Pippin, and Dminic Monaghan as Merry. Picture courtesy Collider.

This gives me hope for a great movie. Find people who are passionate about the topic and let them go at it. Colbert is writing this with his son Peter McGee. The soon to be former late night host spoke to original trilogy director Peter Jackson and told him that this film will be part of Jackson’s larger story.

There are a still a lot of questions that need to be answered. Will Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd return as Sam, Marry, and Pippin? Will other actors portray their younger selves since the first movie was shot 25 years ago or will the original three be digitally deaged? And probably the most important question, will this film have another fun fact like Viggo Mortensen breaking his toe in The Two Towers?

Stephen Colbert dressed as his character The Laketown Spy from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug while speaking at San Diego ComicCon. Picture courtesy Rolling Stone.

But I digress. The true question should be if this film can pick up the pieces of the silver screen left behind by the trainwreck that was The Hobbit trilogy. December of 2024 brought us The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim which was met with a 49% Tomatometer score with a vastly different 81% Popcornmeter score (basically critics vs real people) on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic is worse with a 54 critic score and a 5.3 audience score. However, The Hobbit movies did a lot of damage to the franchise and I myself never even saw the third film because I hated the first two so much.

I am, of course, leaving out the mostly well recieved Amazon Prime TV show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and focusing on the movies. That being said we do have a LOTR movie coming out before Colbert’s venture into the prolific fantasy realm. That’s The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum directed by Andy Serkis.

Steph Colbert (Right) with his son Peter McGee (Left) meeting Peter Jackson (Center). Picture courtesy the BBC.

The great thing about the LOTR world is that it’s huge. We got the 3 main movies and there’s still a ton of film potential. Tom Bombadil, in fact, can probably get his own set of films. We could get a film dedicated to Pippin in Gondor. And how much more do we have from the appendices that could be turned into content?

Stephen Colbert has the opportunity to not only show how much life is left in the franchise, but also show us that it can be well done. If you want more from popular fantasy IPs but don’t want to support the new Harry Potter show because you don’t want to give money to a disgusting TERF, then you have hope and Lord of the Rings is that hope.

It’s sad that Late Night with Stephen Colbert is ending and its a shame that a tamtrum thrown by the cheeto-in-chief could end the most popular late night talk show, but Colbert will bounce back. We haven’t seen the last of him.