The “Lord of the Rings” director will produce the upcoming franchise film, “The Hunt for Gollum.”

Peter Jackson explains how Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker inspired new Gollum movie

The "Lord of the Rings" director will produce the upcoming franchise film, "The Hunt for Gollum."

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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May 15, 2026 12:30 p.m. ET

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Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings The Return of the King' and the Joker in 'Joker: Folie à Deux'. Credit:

New Line; Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.

- Peter Jackson said the new *Lord of the Rings* film, *The Hunt for Gollum*, will explore the character's psychology from his perspective, much like the Joker in those movies.

- Jackson will take the role of producer on the movie, while Andy Serkis, the actor who plays Gollum, directs.

- The highly anticipated project is set for release in 2027.

Peter Jackson, the director of many *Lord of the Rings* film adaptations, found inspiration for the new movie in the franchise, which centers on the ring-obsessed Gollum, from a 2019 title that's also heavily steeped in lore.

"We were thinking about the original *Joker* film, the one with Joaquin Phoenix," the director told IndieWire for a story published Thursday. "The way that explored the Joker's psychology while it was telling a story. We've got the story that's in the appendices, and we'll tell that story, but we'll tell it from an internal Gollum perspective."

He added, "You're taking written things by [J.R.R.] Tolkien and filming them from a certain POV, and that means you have to get inside his head. I’ve got no particular desire to get inside Gollum’s head," he said, laughing. "Andy Serkis can do that himself."

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Jackson also directed the *Hobbit* films based on Tolkien's works, but he's not going to helm the highly anticipated *The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum*. Serkis, who portrays Gollum, will. And there's a good reason why.

"I thought, well, this story would actually be more interesting if Gollum himself directed it — and Andy is about as close as you can get," the Oscar winner said Tuesday at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, per *The Hollywood Reporter*. "The film is very much an internal story about Gollum's psychology and his sort of addiction. It's a very personal story to Gollum the character. And so I thought, well, Andy knows this guy better than anybody."

Jackson added that he never thought he would direct it.

"I didn't really think much about the idea of me doing it at all," Jackson noted to *THR*. "I thought the most exciting version of this movie is going to be if Andy Serkis makes it, because he's going to put a Gollum psychology on screen that you cannot imagine."

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Phoenix portrayed the villainous Batman character that was first introduced in comic books in 1940 — and also known as Arthur Fleck — in both the 2019 film *Joker* and, in 2024, *Joker: Folie à Deux*. For the first, he won the Oscar for Best Actor.

Director Todd Phillips, who was behind the lens for both outings, was nominated for Best Director. The movie itself was up for Best Picture.

For his part, Phoenix has said that the role was a challenge.

Peter Jackson at the Cannes Film Festival on May 12.

Ernesto Ruscio/Getty

"The first thing was the weight loss, that's really what I started with," Phoenix said at the Venice Film Festival in August 2019. "As it turns out, that impacts your psychology, and you really start to go mad when you lose that much weight in that amount of time. There's also a book about political assassins that I thought was interesting, and breaks down the different types of personalities that do those sorts of things.

*The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum* arrives in theaters Dec. 17, 2027.

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