Anya Taylor-Joy is headed to the Shire.
The star of “Furiosa” will play Seren in “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros Pictures. The film will be released worldwide on Dec. 17, 2027.
Andy Serkis is directing the new film, and will return to his role as Gollum. Ian McKellan, Elijah Wood and Lee Pace will also return from other parts of the franchise. Taylor-Joy joins new members to the “Lord of the Rings” fold, including Kate Winslet as Marigol, Jamie Dornan as Strider and Leo Woodall as Halvard.
Taylor-Joy’s character is described as “a Sindar Elf of the Woodland Realm, a trusted and lethal agent of King Thranduil (Pace).”
Reuniting the Oscar-winning team behind “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Zane Weiner are producing the film alongside Ken Kamins, with Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish of The Imaginarium serving as executive producers. The screenplay for the new film was written by Walsh and Boyens, with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou.
Taylor-Joy’s recent work includes appearing in this spring’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” (the first film to cross the $1 billion mark in 2026) and has “Dune: Part Three” coming up this Christmas, along with a new Apple TV series “Lucky,” due out later this year. Taylor-Joy is repped by CAA, The Way Management, APEX PR, and Felker Toczek Suddleson McGinnis Ryan.
But “The Hunt for Gollum” isn’t the only “Lord of the Rings” project in the works from the original team, with “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past” also on the way, which will be written by Boyens, Stephen Colbert and Peter McGee and produced by WingNut Films in association with Spartina Industries.
The last “Lord of the Rings” movie was 2024’s “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” an animated film set in Middle-earth and co-written by Boyens, who also produced it alongside Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who served as executive producers. The film was a box-office disappointment, earning just over $20 million worldwide on a budget of more than $30 million, but the movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, showed the franchise still had considerable elasticity. It also secured the film rights for Warner Bros. for a few more years.
Clearly, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema’s commitment to the “Lord of the Rings” franchise is as strong as ever, following both the original trilogy and “Hobbit” trilogy of films, all of which were directed by Jackson and have amassed nearly $6 billion worldwide.
