It sounds like The Hunt for Gollum will take a while, as Gandalf himself says the team behind it is planning for two films

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is, perhaps unsurprisingly, supposedly going to be split into two films, according to Ian McKellen.

It seems like Warner Bros is looking to continue its tradition of stretching out Lord of the Rings films into slightly too long with its next project, The Hunt for Gollum – you might remember that The Hobbit was turned into a trilogy, despite there not being quite enough book to actually manage that, but hey ho, there’s money to be made. And there’s even more money to be made, as the Gollum-centric film announced earlier this year will apparently be two films. This comes from Gandalf himself, Ian McKellen, who recently made an appearance on ITV’s This Morning where he was asked about whether he’ll be appearing in the film.

The actor recently had an accident during a performance of a play he’s currently a part of, leading him to take a bit of time off work to recuperate, and was in turn asked if he’ll be in it. “All I know is that they called me up and said these films were going to happen, mainly to be about Gollum, Andy Serkis who played Gollum’s going to direct, and there would be a script arriving sometime in the new year, and then I’ll judge whether I want to go back,” McKellen shared, reiterating previous comments. He went on to say he would love to come back, and when asked if it would just be one film, he shared “I’m told it’s two films.”

That obviously isn’t set in stone just yet, as if a script won’t even be in McKellen’s hands until next year things could change quite rapidly. I’m also not entirely sure how a hunt for Gollum could even be interesting for two films, but hey, who knows better than executives that like to make money, right?