Please tell me the new Lord of the Rings movie in 2026 isn’t repeating this major franchise mistake

I hope The Lord of the Rings Franchise is not repeating a previous mistake with The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Andy Serkis, who played Gollum The Lord of the Rings and in The Hobbit: An Unexpected JourneyWill serve as The dog for Gollums director, with Peter Jackson also attached as a producer. The movie is slated for a 2026 release and is expected to show Serkis reprising the role of Gollum in a story that takes place before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Another familiar franchise actor already attached to the project is Ian McKellenWho played Gandalf in each of The Lord of the Rings And Hobbit Movies. McKellen said he was approached to play the beloved wizard again and later recalled being told The dog for Gollum There will be two movies. This development has not yet been officially confirmed, but if it proves to be true, it will follow in the footsteps of a previous misstep for the fantasy franchise.

It sounds like The Hunt for Gollum could repeat a Lord of the Rings franchise mistake

The Hobbit should not have been a trilogy

If The dog for Gollum is split into two movies, I fear it will make the same mistake as The Hobbit movies, which took the roughly 300-page source material and needlessly overextended it into a trilogy. Each of the installments of the trilogy was a financial success, and I enjoyed various aspects of each movie, but They are ultimately not an effective adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s source material. This was especially important The Battle of the Five ArmiesWhich mostly focused on a battle that is only a short part of the book.

The Hobbit Is supposed to be the story of Bilbo Baggins, but Bilbo misses much of the battle due to being temporarily knocked unconscious. Martin Freeman did a fantastic job with Bilbo, but the movie trilogy lost sight of his arc as it progressed and focused more on massive battle sequences and on characters and storylines not in the book, including Thorin’s conflict with Azog the Defiler and the inclusion. of Legolas. The Hobbit Only needed to be two movies at mostWhile The dog for Gollum There just needs to be one movie.

Splitting the hunt for Gollum into two movies doesn’t make sense

It lacks the source material needed to be two movies

While The Hobbit Trilogy has a full novel to adapt, The dog for Gollum has much less to draw from, as there is no existing source material Fully dedicated to this story. There are only references throughout Tolkien’s works, including Aragorn telling the Council of Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring That it was “Some need to tell of” What happened while hunting for Gollum. The Battle of the Five Armies didn’t need to be its own movie, but at least it was enough information The Hobbit To extend the title conflict.

The dog for Gollum is based on limited information from Tolkien’s writingswhich may make its connections to The Lord of the Rings Feel too thick. This makes me worry that it might not be enough to justify one movie, and splitting the story into two movies only makes the issue worse. Even the upcoming standalone anime movie of the franchise, War of the RohirrimSeems like it has a bigger story to tell than that The dog for Gollum does, which makes the two-film potential even more questionable.

I really hope that Ian McKellen’s “Lord of the Rings” movie update is not true

The Hunt for Gollum shouldn’t be two movies

Since The dog for Gollum Still seems to be in relatively early stagesI’m hoping it won’t actually be two movies. I’m already concerned that the film was made not because it has a great story to tell, but because Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav wants to continue to capitalize on the popular intellectual property that his company owns. Taking a dubious premise and potentially already committing to two movies does nothing to alleviate those concerns.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the most commercially and critically successful trilogies of all time, but that doesn’t mean every live-action Middle-earth project has to be turned into multiple movies. You don’t have to be intimate acquaintances Lord of the Rings‘ Know that it is There’s only so much that can happen to Gollum and the One Ring before that FellowshipAnother sign that multiple installments are not needed. All of these reasons leave me hopeful The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum There will only be one movie instead of two.