Elijah Wood Celebrates Lord of the Rings in AT&T Super Bowl 2021 Commercial

A popular trend in Super Bowl commercials for a few years now is tapping into the nostalgia for big franchises, films, and actors. Already this year we’ve seen a Wayne’s World reunion thanks to Uber Eats not to mention a return to Rydell High thanks to some sweet dance moves by John Travolta and his daughter, Ella Travolta. AT&T is digging into that big time with one of their ads. Released earlier today, the AT&T Fiber ad for the big game sees Elijah Wood appear in a scenario opposite some Lord of the Rings super fans. The embarrassment seen here might make you want to cast yourself into Mount Doom. Check it out below and stream the game totally for free on CBS Sports this Sunday.

In case you forgot, AT&T acquired Time Warner Inc. in 2018 and reformed it into WarnerMedia. As part of the acquisition, AT&T now owns the WB film catalogue, which includes movies from subsidiaries like New Line Cinema which naturally includes The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. There might be some confusion in a few years when Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series finally debuts, since it will have no association with the feature films and in fact won’t even be adapting any of the three books from the series. Production is ongoing on that series.

“They’re calling it ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but I think that’s slightly misleading,” Wood previously revealed to IndieWire, “From what I understand, the material they are working on exists chronologically further back in history in the lore of Lord of the Rings or Middle-Earth than any characters represented in Lord of the Rings.”

He added, “It sounds more Silmarillion era. Not to get nerdy, but it’s the Second Age of Middle-Earth.”

Lord of the Rings news isn’t in short supply these days either, right before the release of the above Super Bowl ad it was announced that the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy has been optimized and will be released in the IMAX format for the first time starting on February 5th.

IMAX will be showing one film for the first week while the next week will see the release of the other installments, with each version of the films being the remastered edition that director Peter Jackson recently approved and released on home video. The Lords of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring debuts on February 5th while The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King open on February 12th.