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May 16, 2024

Hunt for Gollum: What Might Be in Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis' New Film

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Mythmakers

Very excitingly, Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis have announced that they are teaming up for a new film: The Hunt for Gollum. Join us on today’s episode of Mythmakers where Julia Golding will take us through the material that they will be drawing on and what the story possibilities are in this LotR prequel. Don't forget to let us know what you'd like to see included in the film!

 

Since recording this episode, the fan-made film that Julia speaks about has been allowed back on YouTube by Warner Bros (hooray!) so click the link below to watch it: 

https://youtu.be/9H09xnhlCQU?si=4cafO8kxOO06U03x

 

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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm an author, and I also run the events at the Centre. Now I thought I would do a special short episode dedicated to the news that Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis are teaming up again for a new project which they've called The Hunt for Gollum. Now, you might be scratching your head thinking, "I've never heard of a Tolkien book called The Hunt for Gollum," and the point of my short podcast episode here is to just clue you into what this might be about. So first of all, let's talk about the actual history of this. There was out there for many years a fan-made, sort of self-proclaimed little film, which was pretty good, called The Hunt for Gollum, which was done by independents, probably with no rights gained. They also did another film called Born of Hope, which is about Aragorn. So the idea of doing a film called The Hunt for Gollum has already been out there for a while. But I think Warner Brothers has struck down that film because they're now claiming that they have the rights to this, which is a shame for those independents. But anyway, I suppose copyright has to be protected, particularly if you've shelled out a lot of money for those rights. But this is separate from the series that's ongoing with Amazon, which is The Rings of Power. With The Rings of Power, they have the rights to Second Age material. The Hunt for Gollum falls within the rights that Peter Jackson, Warner Brothers and co. got for the Lord of the Rings books. So where do we find The Hunt for Gollum? The material for this falls in three main places. The first place you might want to look is in The Fellowship of the Ring. In The Fellowship of the Ring, early on, this isn't really done in the film version because they want to get out the front door. But when Gandalf comes back, having looked into the history of the ring and he wants to test if the ring is the One Ring by throwing it in the fire, he explains to Frodo, like the sort of custody chain really, how it went from being on Isildur's finger to falling in the river to being picked up by Smeagol. We saw that episode in the beginning of the third film in the Peter Jackson adaptation, how he fought his cousin for the ring and then went into the mountains to hide and then came across Bilbo many, many centuries later. And the riddles game, which you see in The Hobbit, you can either read it in The Hobbit or see it in the film. The ring, not as a part of that, but Bilbo comes across it because Gollum has dropped it and then he escapes using it. So far, so familiar. And then obviously the rest of the story follows the ring primarily because that's what takes us through Bilbo giving it to Frodo, Frodo taking it to Rivendell and so on. What the hunt for Gollum would be about is what then happens to Gollum between Bilbo leaving him and him catching up with the Fellowship in Moria later on in Fellowship of the Ring. But Frodo only hears about Gollum's part in those missing years from Gandalf because Gandalf has been hunting him, hence Hunt for Gollum. And so there's quite an extended piece that Gandalf tells Frodo in Bag End, which gives the history of how he and his friend, the ranger, track down Gollum. And what's really interesting about that is it foreshadows Aragorn and Frodo doesn't really put this together as being the same person as the strider he meets in brief for quite some time. And probably as a reader reading this first time, we also don't notice. So actually it's worth just noting how Aragorn is introduced. He's actually not called a ranger. When I look more closely at the text, always look closely at the text. What Gandalf says is that the trail was long cold when he took it up again. My search would have been in vain, but for the help that I had from a friend, Aragorn, the greatest traveler and huntsman of this age of the world. Together we sought for Gollum down the whole length of Wilderland without hope and without success. But at last, when I had given up the chase and turned to other parts, Gollum was found. My friend returned out of great perils, bringing the miserable creature with him. So that's a good introduction for Aragorn and lots of cinematic gold in there. Greatest perils. We don't hear who Aragorn was with, so you could imagine all sorts of favorite characters, including Arwen being there maybe. Anyway, Glorfindel, why not? So those are the materials to work with coming out of that chapter. The reason why Frodo doesn't put the two together is that Aragorn's name doesn't actually come up until the letter which Barliman Butterbur has kept on his to-do list and not sent to the Shire. Before that, Frodo only knows of Aragorn as Strider. He then goes on to say that when he and Aragorn caught up with Gollum, they feared that Gollum had been captured, taken to Mordor, tortured, and even the name of Baggins might be known to the Dark Lord. We get a glimpse of that in the film, if you remember, a scene where Gollum is on a rack and screeching the name of Baggins. That gives Frodo the impetus to say, "Right, I've got to leave them because if they're coming to the Shire and looking for Baggins, that will bring them to my doorstep," which of course is what happens. So there is a long period where Gandalf and Aragorn are hunting him. In fact, Gandalf says he goes away and it's Aragorn who actually catches up with Gollum and calls him back. There's that part, so you just need to turn to the chapter called The Shadow of the Past and you can read that material. What happens after that, after they've talked to Gollum, is he is put in the care of the wood elves. That's Thranduil, Legolas' father, that kingdom, and he's looked after there. We get another little glimpse of what might have happened to Gollum when Legolas reveals that Gollum escaped the elves' care captivity. This is something that comes up during the Council of Elrond. So there's another mention of Gollum at that point. Thinking about this as a literary technique, it's Tolkien keeping on just gently nudging us of Gollum's existence so that when he does turn up, we've had the way prepared for us with talk of Gollum. So two places to have a quick look at would be The Shadow of the Past and the Council of Elrond to see the material which the hunt for Gollum might be covering. But there's also a third place which you may not have noticed because it's in the appendices. This is where they're really working their rights as Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis because it comes in Appendix B where there is a timeline of the Third Age and the key events. The hunt for Gollum features in that. For example, we hear that at Bilbo's farewell feast, Gandalf begins to suspect that the Ring is the one and he sets off seeking for news of Gollum and calls on the help of Aragorn. So that's 3001. And then it's not till 3009, it's a quite long film this, isn't it? I imagine they'll truncate all of this. It says Gandalf and Aragorn renew their hunt for Gollum at intervals during the next eight years. They're persistent, I've got to give them that. They're searching in the vales of Anduin, Mirkwood and Rhovanion to the confines of Mordor. At some time during these years, Gollum himself ventured into Mordor and was captured by Sauron. That sort of is that central bit where the key fact that Baggins from the Shire got the Ring is revealed. Gollum is actually in captivity in Mordor for some years because it says in 3017, so that's 16 years after Bilbo's farewell feast, Gollum is released from Mordor and is taken by Aragorn in the Dead Marshes and brought to Thranduil in Mirkwood. So that's the bit that links up to the captivity on the Wood Elves. And you'll remember when Gollum is traveling with Frodo and Sam, he talks about not liking elven food. And also, we learn another detail that the reason why he escaped the Wood Elves, I think this is during the Council of Elrond, that they took pity on him and would allow him to climb a tree to sort of sniff the air. And a gang of orcs came by and killed his guards and he escaped. And that was possibly set up as a way of helping him escape. So there is more detail in Appendix B. So he escapes in 3017 and it's 3018 that we start the events of the main bit of Lord of the Rings. It's in June of that year that Thranduil is attacked and Gollum escapes. So by August, it says all trace of Gollum is lost. It is thought that about this time being hunted both by the elves and Sauron's servants, he took refuge in Moria. That connects, that's the sort of last bit that connects to him starting to follow the friendship when they get to Moria. So there's the bits and pieces, the patchwork of information that the team are going to turn into a film. So let's think what they might do. So we have the dream team back in charge of the script, which is fun because it will tonally I think fit with the Lord of the Rings films that we know. So we've got Peter Jackson himself, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh working the script. So I think they'll have to do a couple of things here. They will have to truncate that time to make it feel a bit more urgent. You're not going to have a film where it's, "Oh, let's have another go at finding Gollum." You're going to actually give it some shaping. We'll meet the younger Aragorn and I think they will take the opportunity to weave in the relationship with Arwen. So I think we'll probably have a casting of a younger Aragorn and a new Arwen. Obviously Arwen would look the same as Liv Tyler does in the film, but we've all aged haven't we since then, so they'll probably have to recast all of that. I wonder if they'll get Ian McKellen back as Gandalf. That's an interesting question. I mean, Ian is in his eighties now, but he's still at the moment acting Shakespeare, playing Falstaff. That would be fun, but he is an integral part of this. Whether or not he's up for lots of scenes hunting in the wild, I don't know, but it would be a fascinating challenge to cast somebody else if Ian doesn't want that opportunity. That's going to be interesting, isn't it? Let's watch out for casting news. And of course we've got Andy Serkis coming back as Gollum. I think Gollum's own trajectory is quite a difficult one because he's already the little sort of shored up creature who's been living in the roots of the mountain. And his journey here is one of being a hunted creature. So I can't see much development in his character, which will make it quite an interesting challenge because we kind of know his tricks. I wonder how they're going to make us root for him. Of course he gets captured. We're going to get Shelob because one of the ways he escapes from Mordor is to make friends with the spider. Friends, that's not the right word, is it? Persuade the spider that he's not worth eating and it would be better off bringing her food, which is his way out of Mordor. So that's going to be an interesting challenge. We've got the wonderful Andy Serkis doing the voice again and it doesn't matter how much he's aged because it's all the wonderful world of CGI. So off we go again. That will be consistent. So my guess is that the main focus will be on Aragorn and his friendship with Gandalf. Perhaps they will make this the first time or one of the first times when Gandalf properly meets Aragorn and sees the key player and the important person he's going to become. So you can get a bit of a bromance going in the nicest possible way. Perhaps they will also use this as an opportunity to bring Arwen out of Rivendell because there's nothing to stop her coming along for the ride. Tolkien doesn't mention she's there, but I would imagine that there's some wiggle room there. So I think it would be an opportunity to explore the Rivendell setup. Two figures who are missing from the films is Elrondan and Elrohir, who are the brothers of Arwen, Elrond's sons. It'd be fun to see them plus the company of the rangers because the rangers are active in the north protecting the land. So you can have a flip side story where you see the rangers looking down upon Hobbiton. I'm sitting in Hobbiton on my backdrop if you're watching this. So that would be an interesting thing to do. So you flip the story to see the work they're doing protecting the northern kingdom. And that would give us a chance to establish the northern landscapes in a way that's not yet been done. So he's got some fresh territory that he can do. They might get a chance to do barrow downs, for example. Those kind of things. I can hear the fans saying, "Let's have Tom Bombadil!" I don't know if he would fit, but it wouldn't be completely out of all possibilities. You could certainly revisit Bree and Weathertop and places like that and the Troll Shores. So I think it's an interesting film concept and the big pull of it, of course, is the younger Aragorn. A chance for a handsome young actor to make his mark. Aragorn, of course, isn't that young at this time because he's already a mature man who's served in both Rohan and Gondor at this point. But still, I think probably Viggo Mortensen is a little, you know, it's more than 20 years on. He probably isn't coming back as Aragorn, but somebody in that ilk would be playing that and a new Arwen. So that would be interesting. It would be good to hear from you and what you would like to see as sort of material for this. I haven't even mentioned the Dwarves, for example. You could go to the Lonely Mountain during this time and see that kingdom, the one that Bilbo helped establish. You could go to visit the people of the Lonely Mountain and Lake Town being rebuilt and Dale and all of those. So that's another whole area. And Lothlorien, loads of things you could do. But what I'd be looking out for as a sort of a storyteller is I'll be looking out for what line they are taking and who is their focus. Because Tolkien himself says that in the case of Hobbits, for example, Hobbits are only interesting when they're in un-Hobbit-like situations. That's a comment that C.S. Lewis made to him and influenced the way he wrote Lord of the Rings. I think in order to make this relatable, you have to choose whoever your key person is, let's say Aragorn, and put Aragorn in some situations where he's uncomfortable, move him out of his comfort zone. Because he's the one who's got to have the character arc. I think perhaps you could do this as the story where he actually steps up and sees that his future to become King of Gondor, he sees his responsibility through the experiences of this film. It would make it worthwhile doing as a prequel. Anyway, that was what I thought when I heard that news and I look forward to hearing your comments about what you would like to see in The Hunt for Gollum. Thank you very much for listening.

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