Middle-earth’s most beloved king has already been recast once. Stuart Townsend was Peter Jackson‘s original Aragorn until Viggo Mortensen took over as the trilogy began shooting, and the replacement became the weathered heart of The Lord of the Rings. Now Jamie Dornan inherits the ranger for Warner Bros. and New Line’s The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and his opening move is to concede the comparison rather than fight it.

“There’s pressure when you’re trying to follow in those footsteps,” the Golden Globe nominee told L’Officiel, in remarks highlighted by Deadline. “I’ve been asked to play a super-iconic role, and I’ll do my best.”

Then he went further than most actors do when stepping into a predecessor’s signature part. “But for me, Aragorn will always be just Viggo,” Dornan said. “His performance is one of my all-time favorites, and I feel honored 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.”

The deference suits the project. The Hunt for Gollum is not a reboot asking audiences to forget Jackson’s films but a prequel built inside their memory. Andy Serkis directs and reprises Gollum, Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen return as Frodo and Gandalf, and Lee Pace is back as Thranduil from The Hobbit films. Deadline has also reported that Kate Winslet is joining the cast as Marigol. In an ensemble stitched together from returning faces, the newcomer in the most famous role is choosing homage over reinvention.

The story covers ground the earlier films never showed. Set between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, and developed largely from Tolkien’s footnotes, it follows Aragorn’s perilous quest to capture Gollum before the creature can reveal the Ring’s location to Sauron. That puts Dornan’s character years before the king Mortensen played, still travelling as Strider, the alias Warner Bros. used when it unveiled the casting.

For Dornan, whose Golden Globe nomination came for Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, it is the largest franchise role of a career that has moved between prestige drama and studio fare. Warner Bros. announced the casting at CinemaCon in April, alongside Leo Woodall as Halvard, and the film is set for release on December 17, 2027.

There is a quiet irony in the humility: the Aragorn Dornan refuses to outdo was himself a late substitution, and Mortensen turned that swap into the performance his successor now calls definitive.