Peter Jackson Is Eyeing a New Lord of the Rings Project — Here's Who Fans Want to See in Middle-earth | myCast Blog | myCast.io
Lord of the RingsPeter JacksonTolkienfantasy castingMiddle-earthHenry CavillBarry KeoghanPierce Brosnan
Peter Jackson Is Eyeing a New Lord of the Rings Project — Here's Who Fans Want to See in Middle-earth
via Screen Rant
According to Screen Rant, Peter Jackson has signaled serious interest in returning to Middle-earth with a new Lord of the Rings adaptation — and his own words suggest he's hungry for something with more substance than a straightforward retread.
What 'Something Meatier' Could Actually Mean
For Tolkien fans, that phrase is a genuine invitation to speculate. Jackson's original trilogy left enormous swaths of the source material untouched — the full history of Númenor, the Wars of the Elves and Sauron, the tale of Beren and Lúthien, the Children of Húrin. Any of these would demand entirely new casts for characters who have never appeared on screen in a live-action Jackson production. Even a fresh adaptation of the core Fellowship story would require reimagining some of fantasy's most iconic roles from scratch. Either way, the casting conversation just got a whole lot more interesting.
This is exactly the kind of news that sends fancasting communities into overdrive — and rightfully so. Whether Jackson ends up adapting a deep-cut Silmarillion story or takes another pass at the main saga with a new generation of actors, the roster of potential roles is enormous. That's a lot of casting decisions to dream about.
What the myCast Community Is Already Saying
Here's the thing: myCast fans haven't been waiting around for this announcement. There are already multiple active fan-cast stories for The Lord of the Rings on the platform, and the picks are genuinely fascinating.
The most active story right now is The Lord of the Rings, a 30-role fan cast with 20 votes logged. The community there has rallied hard around Pierce Brosnan for Gandalf with 6 votes — a choice that makes a certain kind of sense when you think about his commanding presence and natural gravitas. Henry Cavill leads the Aragorn vote with 4, which feels almost inevitable given how frequently his name surfaces in epic fantasy conversations. Barry Keoghan tops the Frodo Baggins slot with 3 votes, a genuinely inspired pick that leans into the character's haunted, increasingly fragile quality. And Paul Mescal for Merry Brandybuck — with 2 votes — is the kind of inspired sideways suggestion only fan casting produces.
Over in the The Lord Of The Rings story, the vibe skews toward a slightly older, more seasoned ensemble. Michael Fassbender leads the Aragorn vote with 2, James McAvoy tops the Frodo slot with 2, and Tom Hollander shows up as a fan favorite for Bilbo — a casting choice that would be quietly perfect. There's also a third story, The Lord of the Rings, that appears to reflect an older, pre-Jackson era of LOTR dreaming, with Christopher Lee leading the Gandalf vote — a poignant nod to a casting legend.
Taken together, these stories reveal two distinct schools of thought in the fan community: those who want a grittier, more intense ensemble (the Keoghan-Fassbender axis), and those who want something warmer and more classically heroic (the Cavill-Brosnan camp). A Jackson project could honestly go either direction.
The Bigger Casting Picture
What strikes me most about the fan picks is how strongly they skew toward Irish and British talent — Keoghan, Mescal, Lowden, Fassbender, McAvoy. That's not an accident. There's an instinct in the community that Middle-earth should feel rooted in a specific kind of Atlantic-Celtic texture, which Jackson's original trilogy leaned into heavily through New Zealand's landscapes and its largely British and Australian cast. If Jackson is genuinely pursuing something deeper in the Tolkien lore, that sensibility would carry over naturally.
The wildcard is scope. A Silmarillion-adjacent project would introduce characters that fans have never had to cast before — Fëanor, Fingolfin, Lúthien, Turin Turambar. That's an entirely open field, and honestly, it's one of the most exciting fancasting opportunities in years.
Cast Your Vote on myCast
The conversation is already live — head over to The Lord of the Rings to add your votes, or start a brand-new story if you think Jackson should go deep into Tolkien's legendarium. Who would you cast in a story that's never been told on screen before?
