Stephen Colbert just got fired from CBS for running a show that hemorrhaged somewhere between $40 and $50 million a year, and Hollywood’s response was to hand him the keys to the Lord of the Rings franchise. This is like watching a guy total his Kia in the parking lot and then tossing him the keys to your Lamborghini.
Whoa — hold on. The man whose only screenwriting credit is a Comedy Central movie that approximately nine people saw is now co-writing the next entry in the trilogy that swept 17 Oscars? Who approved this?
For those who missed it, Warner Bros. announced on Tolkien Reading Day — yes, that’s apparently a holiday now, because of course it is — that the 61-year-old comedian will co-write a brand new Lord of the Rings movie called *The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past*. Colbert pitched the idea to Peter Jackson, and Jackson said yes, because apparently even Peter Jackson forgot what made his own movies good.
That lone screenwriting credit, by the way, is *Strangers with Candy* from 2006. Colbert also weaseled his way into a cameo in one of the Hobbit films as a Lake-town spy, and he brought his entire real-life family along for bit parts. (Nothing says “earned it on merit” like dragging the wife and kids to your vanity cameo in New Zealand.)
He’s bringing his son Peter McGee along as co-writer on this one too. McGee’s most notable credit? Production work on *Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker* — the film that drove a lightsaber through that franchise’s heart and left it twitching on the floor. So we’ve got the guy who couldn’t keep a late-night audience and the kid who helped kill Star Wars teaming up to handle Tolkien. What could go wrong?
But wait — it gets better. CBS pulled the plug on *The Late Show* days after Colbert threw a public tantrum over Paramount paying $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Trump. Colbert — who was pulling down at least $15 million a year to lecture Middle America about how stupid we all are — went on air and called the settlement a “big fat bribe.”
Two days later? Cancelled.
President Trump posted on Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.” Even better — FCC Chair Brendan Carr piled on, calling the Left’s meltdown over Colbert’s cancellation “quite revealing,” and noting they were acting like they lost “a loyal DNC spokesperson.”
That’s because they did. For eleven years, Colbert wasn’t a comedian — he was a Democrat campaign operative with a desk and a house band. He ran free campaign ads for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and whatever other Democrat needed a boost they could never actually deliver. You could practically hear him thinking, “I’m not just an entertainer — I’m saving democracy!” And now this guy is going to handle Tolkien’s legendarium with care and reverence?
We’re sure he’ll treat the source material with total fidelity and won’t inject a single ounce of modern political nonsense into Middle-earth. (And if you believe that, I’ve got a lovely bridge in Rivendell I’d like to sell you. Great views. Very elven.)
We already watched Amazon spend a billion dollars turning Tolkien’s world into a diversity seminar with *The Rings of Power*. Fans absolutely hated it. Critics loved it — because critics are just hall monitors for the cultural establishment at this point. The audience score told the real story, as it always does.
Star Wars? Dead. Marvel? Limping around like it got hit by a bus. Indiana Jones was stumbling through his last movie like a dementia potato. And Hollywood’s answer is to hand the next beloved franchise to *this* guy?
Of course it is. Their solution is always the same — find a progressive activist who’s never written a successful film in his life and give him the keys to something people actually love.
And here’s a fun little bonus — “Late-Night Lenny” was recently revealed as the voice of the “Digital Dean of Students” in *Star Trek: Starfleet Academy*, the Paramount+ show that just got cancelled after audiences rejected it by a two-to-one margin against the critics. The man is a franchise graveyard. Everything he touches turns into unwatchable woke slop that nobody outside of a Brooklyn wine bar wants to consume.
The fan reaction has been about what you’d expect. One viral post summed it up perfectly: “Stephen Colbert writing the new Lord of the Rings is like letting me play for the Mets. Also the Mets would have to be like, the greatest baseball franchise of all time. Why is this happening?”
Why indeed.
Peter Jackson’s original trilogy earned nearly $6 billion worldwide because it was made by people who loved the books more than they loved their own politics. Tolkien wrote about hobbits who just wanted to tend their gardens and ended up saving the world. He didn’t write any of it so some smirking talk show host could give the Shire a recycling program and updated pronoun guidelines. Tolkien is spinning in his grave so fast you could hook him up to a generator and power all of New Zealand.
Mark my words — we’ve watched Hollywood destroy Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones, and about a dozen other franchises by hiring activists instead of storytellers. They’re coming for Tolkien again with a cancelled DNC spokesman behind the keyboard. When this thing flops, Colbert will blame the fans, the culture, and probably Donald Trump personally before he ever considers the possibility that maybe — just maybe — nobody wanted this. These people are unbelievable.
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