Peter Jackson Reveals Joker Inspired The Hunt for Gollum

Peter Jackson has a pretty unexpected touchstone for his return to Middle-earth — and it involves Joaquin Phoenix in facepaint.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who is producing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, told IndieWire that Todd Phillips’ 2019 origin story Joker served as a key inspiration for the upcoming film — specifically the way it burrowed deep into a character’s fractured psychology while still telling a coherent story.

“We were thinking about the original Joker film, the one with Joaquin Phoenix,” Jackson said. “The way that explored the Joker’s psychology while it was telling a story. We’ve got the story that’s in the appendices, and we’ll tell that story, but we’ll tell it from an internal Gollum perspective. You’re taking written things by Tolkien and filming them from a certain POV, and that means you have to get inside his head.”

Then, with a laugh: “I’ve got no particular desire to get inside Gollum’s head. Andy Serkis can do that himself.”

What the Film Is Actually About

Set in the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, The Hunt for Gollum follows Aragorn, tasked by Gandalf to track the creature down before Sauron can learn from him the location of the One Ring. But the film’s emotional core runs deeper than a chase story.

Jackson explained that the source material comes from the appendices tucked at the back of Tolkien’s novels — fifty or sixty pages of notes, backstory, and side narratives that never made it into the main text.

“The Lord of the Rings has got these big appendices at the end,” he said. “Little side stories, embellishments, enlargements — and part of The Hunt for Gollum is described in that. Gollum’s childhood and how he became what he was. Him trying to get to the Shire, and the Rangers tracking him down. He ends up being captured and taken to Mordor — it’s all in the appendices.”

The production is legally cleared to adapt anything from the Lord of the Rings books, Jackson confirmed — a meaningful distinction given the complicated rights landscape around Tolkien’s work. A second film, The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past, co-written by Stephen Colbert, is also in the pipeline and will adapt unseen elements from The Fellowship of the Ring via flashback.

Why Jackson Handed the Camera to Serkis

After directing six films set in Middle-earth across the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy, Jackson made the deliberate choice to step back from the director’s chair — and his reasoning is genuinely hard to argue with.

“I could have directed it, but I thought, ‘I’ve done that,’” he told Deadline at Cannes, where he received an honorary Palme d’Or earlier this week. “The more exciting version of this movie is if Andy Serkis made it.”

He expanded on that to IndieWire: “I honestly, truly believe that if it’s a film about Gollum’s addiction and internal struggles, Andy would make a much more interesting film than me. If I thought I’d do a better film, I’d do it. But I thought, there’s a guy that’s going to make a really interesting film here and it’s not me.”

The logic is hard to dispute. Serkis has inhabited Gollum across multiple films, building a performance that became a landmark in motion-capture acting. He’s also an experienced director in his own right, having helmed Venom: Let There Be Carnage and an adaptation of Animal Farm. Jackson says he’s fully stepping aside — not hovering. “I’m here to help where I can. But I don’t interfere. I’ve given him as much freedom as I can.”

Serkis putting Gollum’s psychology on screen from the inside out, drawing on two decades of living with that character — if the Joker comparison holds, that’s a genuinely compelling proposition. The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum opens December 17, 2027.