Watch the trailer for Stephen Colbert's elaborate mock Lord of the Rings prequel

Everybody has a dream. And if you have the top-rated late night talk show, your network might even bankroll it for you.

No matter what you think of Stephen Colbert's politics, his knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth in unimpeachable. New Zealand "is such a beautiful country, such a magical place, that I'm not surprised it was used as the locations for Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies," he said on Thursday's Late Show. "And as you may know, writer and director Peter Jackson cast me in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I had the very important role of Lake-town spy. So when I was back in New Zealand, I sat down with my friend Peter and talked with him about the next logical step in the Lord of the Rings movie franchise."

Colbert's pitch to Jackson involved the human protagonist of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragorn. "What about this for a backstory?" Colbert asked. "My character is actually Aragorn's slightly hotter twin brother, Darrylgorn." Jackson declined to direct this literary abomination, of course, but he agreed to make a cameo. And Colbert had a trailer for his Darrylgorn spinoff ready to roll. It is quite silly, and it doesn't even make any sense, really — Aragorn would have been about 10 years old during the Hobbit movies Colbert's adult character appeared in, for example.

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But that's beside the point. This is a self-referential, winking labor of love. The three Lord of the Rings movies and three Hobbit movies were box office hits, "and now, after 1,179 minutes, the real saga finally begins," the voiceover to the trailer intones. Watch below. Peter Weber