The Lord of the Rings: Gollum interview — Middle-earth doesn’t intimidate Daedalic’s CEO

Daedalic Entertainment made what I thought was the biggest video game franchise news of last week’s Game Developers Conference 2019 in San Francisco — it’s getting into The Lord of the Rings with an adventure game about Gollum.

The German publisher announced the news this morning. I did an interview with Carsten Fichtelmann, the CEO and cofounder of Daedalic, on Thursday. It started out as a briefing on the news and his company, but we delved deeper into a discussion about the sheer ambition and risk of telling Gollum’s story. Capturing the essence of the character — how he’s driven by his two personalities, both addicted to the obscene power of The One Ring — seems like such an intimidating task, especially in light of the excellent performance Andy Serkis delivered in Peter Jackson’s films (with the help of awesome digital animators and motion-capture specialists).