“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert confirmed Wednesday that dreams can come true, revealing with “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson that he has been quietly working with him for years and writing a new installment for the beloved franchise.

There is arguably no other television personality with a more encyclopedic knowledge of JRR Tolkien’s books than Colbert, as he has demonstrated regularly over the past 11 years on his “Late Show” during some truly impressive Q&A segments on the material.

“You know what your books mean to me and what your movies mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson. “But what I found myself reading over and over again were the opening six chapters of ‘The Fellowship’ that you guys never developed into the first movie back in the day.”

Colbert said he is writing the script with his son Peter McGee and that the film will be based on material from the first book in Tolkien’s series, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” specifically Chapter 3, “Three Is Company,” through Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs.”

“I thought, ‘Oh, wait! Maybe that could be his own story that could fit into the bigger story,'” Colbert told Jackson. “Could we do something that was completely faithful to the books and at the same time completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?”

He said: “I started talking about it with my son Peter, who is also a screenwriter, and we worked on what we thought would work, especially as a framing device for that story, and it took me a few years to work up the courage to call you, but about two years ago, I did.”

Colbert in 2022, hosting a Comic-Con panel for
Colbert in 2022, presenting a panel at Comic-Con on “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”

Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

The film is tentatively titled “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past,” but is still in early development, and is a sequel to the upcoming “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” in which Andy Serkis will reprise his role as the ring-obsessed titular creature.

The news is certainly comforting for fans who know of Colbert’s lifelong obsession with the “Rings,” and those who felt frustration after News canceled his show following controversial pressure from President Donald Trump’s FCC head Brendan Carr.

Jackson cheekily asked his new partner on Wednesday if he was sure he had time to work on this with him, only for the ousted “Late Show” host to joke that “turns out I’ll be free starting this summer,” as his final “Late Show” episode airs May 21.

Early in their talk, Colbert warmly recalled winning Jackson over with his idea and pitching it to executives at New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. He told the Oscar-winning director, “I couldn’t be happier to say they loved it.”

Colbert happily added before signing off, “And that’s what we’re going to work on.”