Sam Heughan has all but said he is involved with “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” although the “Outlander” star stopped short of confirming a role. Heughan appeared at the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland on Oct. 4, where a moderator suggested the Tolkien franchise had run out of steam. He disagreed. “I may have been in New Zealand recently,” he said, adding that he could give nothing away. Fan-account video of the exchange has circulated this week. Andy Serkis’s film is shooting in New Zealand, and Warner Bros. set it for release on Dec. 17, 2027.
The studio’s April cast announcement did not include Heughan. It named Jamie Dornan as a young Aragorn, with Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Lee Pace and Serkis returning. Kate Winslet, Anya Taylor-Joy and Leo Woodall joined as newcomers, and Woodall plays a Ranger called Halvard. The Winter is Coming site, which reported the Wigtown remarks, acknowledged Heughan may simply have visited the set, though it called his evasive answers revealing.
The same site pointed to a second clue. A fan account noticed a rare edition of “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien” offered at auction for the ALS Network, signed by people tied to past and future Middle-earth screen projects. Those signatures reportedly include Heughan’s alongside names from the Gollum production. That claim rests on the fan account’s reading and has no confirmation from the studio.
Heughan’s connection to Tolkien runs deep. His parents belonged to a London hippie community called Gandalf’s Garden, his brother is named Cirdan after an elf, and Heughan has said in earlier interviews that his own name nods to Samwise Gamgee. At Wigtown he joked that he was not named after a hobbit. In 2022 he said he was desperate to play an elf or a dwarf in “The Rings of Power.”
He told the Wigtown audience that a radio dramatization of the books, read by Ian Holm, terrified him as a child and shaped his imagination. “Outlander” ended after eight seasons in May. Winter is Coming speculated that Heughan could play another Ranger or an elf, a guess with no official backing.
