The Lord of the Rings will return to the big screen in 2027 with Andy Serkis' The Hunt for Gollum, and it's already setting itself up for success.

The director explained that "every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa," a flightless bird similar to an ostrich that went extinct 600 years ago.

Colossal Biosciences - which announced in April that it had brought dire wolves back from extinction (only to be met with a howl of critics who called the claims overstated) - is teaming up with filmmaker Peter Jackson on a new animal revival project.