The question comes straight from IGN's coverage: "Gollum movie will be like Joker?" On its face it reads like a punchline. One is a shrieking, ring-obsessed creature from The Lord of the Rings. The other is 2019's Joker, the standalone villain drama that became a box office phenomenon and an awards fixture. But the comparison is doing real work. It signals how the people behind the project want audiences to see it, and it sets expectations for tone and budget before a single frame has been shown.

The factual baseline is thin. The source material contains a headline and a question, not an announcement. It names no director, cast, or release date, and no studio statement appears in what IGN has put forward. The headline presumes a Gollum movie is coming and asks whether it will take the Joker route. That is the entire confirmed foundation. Everything else is inference, and the question is still worth taking seriously, because Joker rewired how studios think about villain-led films.

Why Joker is the reference point

Joker did something few comic book movies had attempted. It took a character who exists primarily as a foil for a hero and made him the entire subject of the film. The result is a long, uncomfortable look at a man coming apart, with no world-saving plot and no connection to a larger universe. Audiences showed up in enormous numbers and the film collected major awards. That result changed the calculus: a villain with enough psychological depth could carry a movie by himself.

Gollum fits that template almost too well. He is one of the most memorable villains in modern fantasy, and his tragedy is built into the character. He started as someone recognizably human before the ring wore him down, and what remains is a broken creature lurching between two personalities, pitiable one moment and threatening the next. That is the material a character study needs: internal conflict and a clear arc, with an ending the audience already knows.

A standalone Gollum film would not need to explain anything. Viewers already know who he is and what the ring does to him. The drama comes from how a story centered on him handles the fall, since the outcome is already known. The harder question is whether it can make an audience care about someone who, in the source material, is ultimately a betrayer and a thief.

The shape of a Joker-style film

If the movie does follow the Joker model, the comparison does more than set a mood. It predicts the shape of the project. Joker was a measured, small-scale drama whose impact came from performance and atmosphere rather than spectacle. A Gollum film built on that model would be a character piece first and a fantasy movie second.

That would be a notable departure from the Lord of the Rings brand. The existing films are vast, sweeping productions full of battles and grand scenery. A Gollum movie in the Joker mold would invert that formula. The setting would shrink and the cast would thin out. The focus would narrow to a single tormented mind. The interest would come from watching a ruined character make choices instead of armies clashing.

Tone would matter as much as story. Joker earned its reputation by refusing to soften its protagonist. The film does not excuse his actions, but it asks you to sit with him and understand the conditions that created him. A Gollum movie would face the same test. He is sympathetic in flashes and dangerous in others, and a shallow version of the character would fail the comparison. The audience needs to feel the pull of the ring the way he feels it, not observe it from a distance.

The risks

The Joker model brings risks along with its rewards. The obvious one is tone. A miserable character study can become a slog if the film mistakes grimness for depth. Gollum's story starts from a dark place, but darkness without a point produces a movie that is hard to sit through and harder to recommend.

There is also the question of how much story a Gollum movie has to tell. Joker worked because the character's ambiguity gave the filmmakers room to invent. Gollum's backstory is more fixed. He was once a person with a name and a life, until the ring remade him. A filmmaker adapting that story has two options: expand the long, lonely middle of Gollum's life, which risks a slow movie with little plot, or invent around him, which risks betraying the character. Joker had the same problem and solved it by being bold. That boldness made the movie exciting and also made it controversial. A Gollum movie that follows that example would face the same trade-offs with a larger and more protective fan base watching.

Premise or promise

The Joker question also tells you how the project is being pitched. Studios do not casually invite that comparison. It signals a desire for prestige, for the kind of critical attention Joker received, and for a take on Middle-earth that feels adult rather than commercial. It signals a specific audience too: adult viewers who respond to character-driven drama rather than families looking for a fantasy adventure.

There is room for that. The Lord of the Rings has always had a melancholy streak, and Gollum is its most explicit expression. A film that treats him as a tragic figure instead of a comic-relief monster could be affecting. The concern is whether the Joker framing becomes a promise the film cannot keep, or a label it wears for marketing while delivering something safer underneath.

The road ahead

Until a studio confirms details, the only fact on the table is the question itself. That is enough to watch for. If the project is announced with a director known for small, psychological work and a release window aimed at awards season, the Joker comparison will have been a preview. If it lands with a big spectacle budget and a wide marketing push, the comparison will read as aspiration rather than description.

The Gollum movie is a test case either way. It asks whether a beloved fantasy universe can support a villain-focused character study, and whether audiences who know exactly how the story ends will show up to watch the how and the why. Joker proved that a villain can carry a movie. Whether Gollum can do the same is the question IGN has put on the table, and it is the right question to ask.