New Aragorn Jamie Dornan says he’s “not trying to outdo” Viggo Mortensen in ‘The Hunt For Gollum’

Jamie Dornan has admitted that he feels “pressure” in succeeding Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings.

Dornan will portray the iconic fantasy character, a close confidant of the wizard Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is due in December 2027. The new movie is set before 2001’s The Fellowship Of The Ring, in which Mortensen made his debut as Aragorn.

“There’s pressure when you’re trying to follow in those footsteps. I’ve been asked to play a super-iconic role, and I’ll do my best,” Dornan told L’Officiel. “But for me, Aragorn will always be just Viggo. His performance is one of my all-time favourites, and I feel honoured to try to recapture at least some of the energy he originally brought to the character. There’s no part of me that’s trying to outdo him.”

Set for released in December 2027, The Hunt for Gollum stars original cast members Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood alongside newcomers Dornan, Kate Winslet, and Anya Taylor-Joy.

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The film’s director Andy Serkis has recently addressed the lack of diversity among the film’s confirmed members. This continues a running criticism of both the Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies, which featured predominantly white casts.

“[Author J.R.R.] Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology, there’s a lot of that feeling,” he told BBC News. “The Shire feels very, very much like a very, a very white, you know… They’re not very concerned about what goes on beyond the borders of The Shire, but they know they don’t want people coming in.”

He continued: “Yes, there have been criticisms [about diversity]. This particular film is somewhat acknowledging that. But we don’t think we will be doing a politically correct just-casting-for-the sake-of-casting-and-ticking-boxes version of the film. So, it’s only where relevant basically.”

As well as The Hunt For Gollum, another spin-off film, Shadow Of The Past, is in the works and being co-written by Stephen Colbert. Elsewhere, original trilogy director Peter Jackson has revealed he was in talks to adapt Tolkein’s book The Silmarillion.