'The Lord of the Rings' Superfan Stephen Colbert Is Basically an Honorary Hobbit at This Point
Stephen Colbert is writing a sequel to 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.'
Published March 25 2026, 1:41 p.m. ET
Fans of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert might know Stephen Colbert best for his ability to deliver the world news with well-timed jokes and interview celebrity guests in a way that puts everyone at ease, but he's also a superfan of The Lord of the Rings franchise. And yes, that includes the books that the movies are based on.
Over the years, Stephen has talked about his connection to The Lord of the Rings fandom, and audience members on his show have come to expect it from him. But how did Stephen find himself as a superfan of the books and movies? There is an origin story for that, along with how he became attached to a sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Stephen Colbert has been part of 'The Lord of the Rings' fandom for a long time.
Stephen is a fan of The Lord of the Rings movies and the J.R.R. Tolkien books. He once wrote a piece for Entertainment Weekly about the end of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie franchise and how he was going through the "five stages of nerd-boy grief" over the movies coming to an end.
He shared in that article that he learned of the movies' impending adaptation in 1998, and he wasn't sure what to think at the time. In a way, the movies would pave the way for so-called nerd culture to be more accepted as mainstream culture. For Stephen, as a lifelong fan, that was huge.
"I was given hope that finally, people might not roll their eyes when I started talking about Middle-earth, that my head full of facts from Fëanor to Faramir might suddenly have some social value," he added at the time. So yeah, Stephen's love for all things Lord of the Rings runs pretty deep, and over time, his fans have come to realize that about him.
During an episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, when an audience member asked Stephen what got him so interested in the books originally, Stephen shared that it began when he was 12 years old. He said that he had "a lot of free time." After a friend gave him one of the books, he got "sucked into it."
Stephen Colbert said he's writing a 'Lord of the Rings' movie.
More than 20 years after Stephen had to say a tearful goodbye to the movies as he knew them, from director Peter Jackson, both Peter and Stephen announced their shared plans for a Lord of the Rings movie on the Warner Bros. Instagram account in a video. Although a movie called The Hunt for Gollum is in development, Stephen is helping to write another movie, The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past.
Along with Stephen's son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and Philippa Boyens, the screenwriter behind The Lord of the Rings movies, Colbert developed a story that was approved by Warner Bros. He said, per the Instagram video, that he hopes it will be "completely faithful" to both the books and the other movies.