Stephen Colbert has dropped new hints about his next project after the fateful end of his CBS late-night show.
After taking home the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series on Monday night, the TV veteran answered a room full of reporters who were eager to ask what he is spending his time on. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired in May, and Colbert has since maintained a low profile, only intermittently popping up throughout the summer.
But he said his latest project is taking up a significant portion of his schedule, revealing just how much this is the case.
“That takes a lot of time, man. You ever written a Lord of the Rings movie?” he said to reporters, as seen in a clip from Vanity Fair. “It’s a full-time job.”
Colbert, sporting a beard and a big smile, said he’d just returned from New Zealand, where he is presumably working on the next installment of The Lord of the Rings.
“Literally, I woke up in New Zealand yesterday. I flew here for the Emmys,” he said, joking that when he was in New Zealand, it “was tomorrow there.”
“I went from yesterday to tomorrow, so I don’t know how many days today has been. What did I say in my speech? I was hallucinating up there,” the 62-year-old quipped.
The former late-night host previously teased that he was in New Zealand in a rare video to promote his late-night colleague for the Emmys. Colbert said he was “at the end of the world,” filming a clip while perched on top of a cliff above the water.
Two months before the much-criticized cancellation of The Late Show, Colbert announced that he will be writing a coming installment in the LOTR series. Colbert will be developing the Warner Bros. Studio film alongside his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and LOTR screenwriter Philippa Boyens.
His preparations for the film, which is tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, appear to be in full swing.
The film will arrive after Andy Serkis’s The Hunt of Gollum, scheduled for theatrical release in December 2027.
Colbert is widely known as a LOTR superfan. “You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me,” he said to Jackson in their joint announcement video.
When asked when fans can expect to see Colbert back onscreen, however, the Emmy-winning host gave no indication of any such project.
Instead, he told reporters to tune in to his scheduled appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which airs Tuesday night. Fellow late-night host and Emmy nominee Jimmy Kimmel revealed Colbert’s cameo last week, telling his audience, “We will be back in a very big way on Tuesday night after the Emmys with the one and only Stephen Colbert, who will be making his return to late-night television.”
While Colbert pushed for Kimmel to win the Outstanding Variety Series award, he and his team received it to a standing ovation.
In his acceptance speech, Colbert thanked his loyal audience and his 200-person team, urging people to hire everyone who poured their talent into his show.
“I got some great news,” he said. “They’re all tech-avail. Hire them. They will make your show better; they will make your day easier.”
