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Warner Bros. really ticked off Tolkien fans when they dropped a bombshell so outrageous that it had people double-checking to make sure it wasn\u2019t a Babylon Bee headline.<\/span><\/p>\n Stephen Colbert. \u201cLord of the Rings.\u201d A match made in the entertainment underworld.<\/p>\n The internet lost its collective mind when the studio announced that Colbert was attached as co-writer to a project no one asked for. The late-night host is currently wrapping up his 11-year run as the face of \u201cThe Late Show\u201d and is bitter as hell on his way out, talking smack<\/a> on President Trump and conservatives. His fifteen viewers will confirm that this is nothing new. But the rhetoric is even more vicious now that he\u2019s got nothing to lose.<\/p>\n And now, somehow, Colbert\u2019s study of and professed love for Tolkien scored him a place at the writer\u2019s table for \u201cLord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.\u201d Film director Peter Jackson dropped that bomb<\/a> on fans last month.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,\u201d Colbert told Jackson during the video announcement, attempting to justify his place in Tolkien\u2019s realm.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [\u2018The Fellowship of the Ring\u2019] that y\u2019all never developed into the first movie back in the day. It\u2019s basically the chapter \u2018Three Is Company\u2019 [Chapter III] through \u2018Fog on the Barrow-Downs\u2019 [Chapter VIII]. And I thought, \u2018Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Colbert said that he and his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, have been working with Jackson on the project for two years.<\/p>\n The show\u2019s description says, \u201cFourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam\u2019s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans were shocked by Colbert\u2019s inclusion, with one reaction summing up the overall feelings nicely. \u201cJust because someone knows everything about another writer\u2019s work doesn\u2019t make them a writer. Or director, or anything even remotely related to making a film,\u201d one Reddit user wrote<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019ve essentially given the reins over to a fanfiction guy; this will be hot garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n The frustration is about Colbert, sure, but it\u2019s also about trusting Hollywood to tread with care when handling a treasured, unapologetically Christian morality based project. Social media users joked about Colbert including DEI side quests and dancing syringes, which is technically possible from such a devoted progressive. However, even if the virtue signaling winds up being a little subtler, there\u2019s still a lot of ways a late-night comedian can screw this up.<\/p>\n