Stephen Colbert Snags Shocking New Gig Ahead of CBS Exit — And It’s a Tolkien Superfan’s Dream

In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO

— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026

Stephen Colbert has already secured his next gig just weeks before his departure from CBS and  announced Tuesday that he’ll be helping write a new Lord of the Rings screenplay.

The comedian and host of the contentiously cancelled Late Show, set for its final episode in May, will co-write The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, a new project produced by Peter Jackson, who famously directed the trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy books.

Jackson revealed the project in a social media video in which he was joined by Colbert, a self-professed devotee of the books, and revealed will collaborate with longtime franchise writers Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee.

In the video, Colbert detailed how the new film will reportedly explore previously unadapted sections of the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, set years after main character Frodo’s journey begins, with familiar characters returning.

Colbert framed the project as a passion-driven expansion of the source material, telling Jackson: “You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me, but the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in the Fellowship that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day.”

“I thought, 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?” he said.

CBS’s decision to end The Late Show in July 2024, which the network said was for financial reasons, was criticized as politically motivated after it followed Colbert’s on-air criticism of parent-company Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump, a frequent target of the host’s mockery.

Speaking to Jackson, Colbert joked about his sudden availability for the screenwriting project, quipping: “It turns out I’m going to be free starting this summer.”

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