From a screen in New Zealand, Andy Serkis materialises like a figure from the very mythology he has spent decades inhabiting. He is 62, silver-haired, and currently directing himself back into the wrinkled skin of the creature that made him famous. The Hunt for Gollum, scheduled for cinemas in time for Christmas 2026, is set in the narrative corridor between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings — a space that, as Serkis explains with the patience of a man accustomed to guiding audiences through complex lore, is very much a deep dive into the psychology and history of Gollum before he became Gollum, driven by a burning question from Gandalf about the origin of the ring that Bilbo Baggins carries. The film's two-dimensional hunt — literal and psychological — promises genuine depth, and the cast assembled around it is undeniably stellar: Kate Winslet, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jamie Dornan, and Leo Woodall join returning figures such as Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen.

What every name on that list also shares, however, is something that has begun to attract scrutiny. Every major casting announcement to date has featured a white actor, in a cultural moment when colour-blind casting has become not merely fashionable but expected across prestige cinema from Lagos to Los Angeles. Serkis, who in 2018 spoke publicly about gaining a new understanding of minority experience while filming Black Panther as one of its few white cast members, does not deflect the question. He nods, pauses, and reaches for an explanation rooted in Tolkien's own sources — Norse mythology, the particular pastoral whiteness of the Shire — before his sentence trails away, unfinished, into something that feels less like an answer and more like an acknowledgement.