Jamie Dornan will reprise his role as Aragorn, ori...

Jamie Dornan will reprise his role as Aragorn, originally played by Viggo Mortensen, in the upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Viggo Mortensen is a fan-favorite actor known for his role as Aragorn, a pivotal character in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film series released in the 2000s.

Jamie Dornan will take on Viggo Mortensen’s iconic role as Gollum in the upcoming Andy Serkis film, *The Hunt for Gollum*.

Warner Bros. announced on Tuesday, April 14, that Dornan, 43, will play Strider — the name Mortensen’s character Aragorn used when audiences first saw him in the 2001 *Lord of the Rings* film — in the upcoming film, as the studio promoted several of its upcoming titles at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas.

“We’ve been waiting for you, precious one,” the studio wrote on Instagram. The announcement also confirmed that Serkis will reprise his roles as Gollum and Sméagol from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series. Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood will also reprise their fan-favorite roles as Gandalf the Grey and Frodo Baggins; Lee Pace will reprise his role as Thranduil from the Hobbit series, while Leo Woodall and Kate Winslet join the series as new characters.

Serkis, 61, recently confirmed in an interview with ScreenRant that Mortensen would not be returning for the Lord of the Rings series to reprise his role as Aragorn. “Let’s just say we’re looking for a replacement for the role and we’re on the road to finding someone suitable,” he said at the time.

Dornan’s last appearance on the big screen was in two 2023 films: A Haunting in Venice and Heart of Stone. Most recently, he starred in the second season of The Tourist on HBO Max. Mortensen, 67, has also not appeared in a film since 2023, when he wrote, directed, and starred in The Dead Don’t Hurt and Eureka.

Warner Bros. It was first announced that Serkis would return as Gollum and direct a film centered around the character’s journey — Serkis told ScreenRant that the film would take place between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring — in May 2024. While it’s unclear who decided to replace Mortensen in the role, the actor seemed uninterested in taking on more franchise roles in an interview with Vanity Fair in July 2024.

Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.

Moviestore/Shutterstock

“If I think I’m a good fit for a character, that’s always my top priority. That applies to the series as well. If someone comes up to me with an idea for movie X, the third or ninth, and I think it’s a great character, I want to play it and I think I can contribute something, I’ll do it. I don’t object to that,” he said at the time.

“But they’re often not very good,” he added. “I mean, for me, they’re often not well-written. They’re pretty predictable. Of course, there’s always the issue of what if I run out of money.”

Jackson, the filmmaker who directed the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, is producing the new film along with screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who adapted JRR Tolkien’s novels for the screen. Walsh and Boyens wrote the screenplay for The Hunt for Gollum along with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is scheduled to be released in theaters in December 2027.