Gollum gets his own Lord of the Rings movie!

Warner Brothers has announced a new Lord of the Rings movie will be
made called "The Hunt for Gollum."  You'll never guess who directs it.
It's a few years away, but the irony is, a bunch of fans already did this
years ago.  Huh?  Listen to the podcast for all the details from your host
John Wesley Downey as well as a glimpse into the EXCITING future of the 
True Film Fan FULL LENGTH episodes coming this summer that will delight
every serious, true film fan.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, I'm John Leslie Downey.I'm the host of True Film Fan Here,
the iHeartMedia podcast that is dedicated topeople who are absolutely obsessed and interested
in all things having to do withmovies. Try to keep you up on
everything. And today I have anannouncement about some Lord of the Rings material,
and I'm going to divide it intothree parts. This is kind of
interesting. First of all, We'regoing to start off with an announcement that

(00:21):
was made my Warner Brothers several yearsago. Then we're going to talk about
an update they gave us this pastweek. And then I'm going to talk
about a footnote to the things thatI've already talked about. So stay with
me anyway. Warner Brothers announced anew live action Lord of the Rings movie
in February of twenty twenty three.They weren't specific, but what they did

(00:42):
say at that time was studio headsMike DeLuca and Pam Abdey announced that they
had broken a deal to make multiplefilms based on the beloved J. R.
R. Tolkien books. A separateanimated Middle Earth movie, The Lord
of the Rings The War of theRow herem is due on December. The
thirteenth from Warner Brothers and director KenjiKamayama. Now that is not part of

(01:04):
the Lord of the Rings Peter Jacksonmaterial that I'm about to talk about,
but that movie is set two hundredyears before the events of The Hobbit.
So that's going to be an animatedmovie in theaters December thirteenth, And they
made that announcement several years ago.But they have now announced that there is
going to be a new Lord ofthe Rings movie called The Hunt for Gollum.

(01:26):
It's currently in early script development stages. Peter Jackson, of course,
who directed the Lord of the Ringsin the Hobbit film trilogies, is producing
the movie alongside his longtime franchise collaboratorsFran Walsh and Felipe bo Boyans. Warner
Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslow has stressedto fans that Jackson and his team will

(01:48):
be involved in every step of theway on this new film. The film
is being planned for a twenty twentysix theatrical release. Now, this is
based on material that a lot ofpeople have seen in thought about, which
is that there was a hunt forGollum within the Lord of the Rings earlier
material, and they're going to workon that and fashion it out into a

(02:10):
complete feature. Mainly involves Gandalf assigningthe task to Airgrn of finding Gollum before
Gollum can find Sam and Frodo.So that's the essence of the story that
they're going to be doing. Now. The movie is not going to be
directed by Peter Jackson. It's goingto be directed by Andy serkis a name

(02:31):
well known to anybody who is aLord of the Rings fan, because of
course he acted out and voiced Gollumin those other movies that have already been
out, and he also he alsodirected a movie called Venom, which he
did a pretty good job on.He will be in the director's seat for
The Hunt for Gollum, so I'dsay that's somebody that probably knows more about

(02:53):
that character than anybody alive, sincehe's played him for multiple movies and he
has done some other directing. ButPeter Jackson will be the grand maestro over
this movie and keeping an eye oneverything about. All we know at this
point is that it's slated for atwenty twenty six release, and the vague
details that I gave you there acouple of minutes ago. Here's what's interesting

(03:13):
about this. This movie is calledThe Hunt for Gollumn. It's already been
made, that's right. A numberof years ago some filmmakers in Europe created
a fan film called The Hunt forGollumn and it was very well received.

(03:34):
In fact, it's online and availableto be watched right now, and it's
got I think about fifteen million views. This was a group of Tolkien fans
that decided this story thread of theHunt for Gollum would be great to make
a short film of, and theydid it and kind of braced themselves to
be sued by the Tolkien estate.However, it was well done enough that

(03:58):
the Tolkien Estate did charge them withanything with violating their rights to the material
or anything like that. In thefact, they said, because it was
so professionally done that it may havebeen a first. They called it a
hybrid, a hybrid fan film.By that they meant it's like a hybrid
fan slash pro film. It wasmade professionally but by fans. So when

(04:24):
Andy Cirkus and Peter Jackson come outwith their Hunt for Gollum movie in a
couple of years, it's going tobe compared to a short version made by
fans for about five thousand dollars backaround two thousand and nine. So the
fans beat the pros to this storyline, and it'll be interesting to compare those
two. So that's the latest onall this. So we've got the animated

(04:47):
movie coming out in December. We'vealready had the fan film of the Hunt
for Column come out years ago,and then in twenty twenty six, the
Andy Serkis directed Hunt for Gollum willbe out. So we've got a lot
to talk about over the next coupleof years, and I'm sure that the
fans tongues will be wagging about allof this talking about our podcast here,

(05:08):
I've got a bunch of things comingup in the near future that are going
to be very interesting. Rob Salcedofrom the Alamo Draft House is going to
be my guest on the program inthe near future. He books the films
that run at Alamo Draft House andhe also presides over several film clubs that
they have, and of course he'sa huge movie fan, needless to say,

(05:30):
and I am really looking forward totalking to him. Also, we're
going to do an entire podcast likea forty minute podcast episode here on sports
films, because sports films are kindof a genre to themselves. Sports fans,
like movie fans, are very opinionated, and we're going to talk about
what some of the greatest ones ofall time are, some of the worst
ones, and some of the mostinspirational sports films, because that, of

(05:53):
course is something that a lot ofsports fans. Sports films seem to specialize
in the ability to inspire the viewerwith somebody overcoming difficult odds. Another thing
that we're going to have here isan in depth look at The Exorcist.
It's been around forever, It's becomea very special movie that has survived the
test of time, and I havea whole lot of details about it that

(06:15):
I think people do not know.So that's also on the agenda in the
next couple of months. Also hereon a True Film Fan podcast, we
are going to do a whole segmenton behavior on the set. We're going
to talk about the way actors relateto other actors and relate to directors.
A lot of romances occur on faraway location shoots, a lot of fights

(06:41):
occur, a lot of creative conflictoccurs on film sets, so we're going
to get on to that subject ina big way in one of our upcoming
podcasts. We've got lots of thingsplanned here for the next couple of months.
I hope that you will subscribe tothe podcast. Also a quick note,
my friend Andrew has a iHeartMedia podcast. It's called International Sign Finders,

(07:02):
and if you like funny signs andwitty signs and why's signs along the side
of the road, he collects those, has pictures of them, and then
he puts them on his podcast anddiscusses them, so you might want to
check out his Also, though,we hope that you will subscribe to the
True Film Fan podcast here for iHeartMedia. Also, you can find our podcast

(07:23):
on the websites for KTRH dot com, KBM dot com, and KPRC nine
fifty dot com, so we're allover the place, also on Apple podcast
and spreaker and everywhere, so pleaserecommend us to your friends. We're going
to be doing lots of movie coveragehere from all different angles, and I
hope you'll join us. Until then, this is John Welsey Downey saying I'll
see you at the movies