For a long time, reports have been rumbling around the return of Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes. The franchise got off to a successful start with Guy Ritchie’s 2009 film and it’s 2011 sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows – but a third film hadn’t happened from there, with the director going on to helm The Man From UNCLE, King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, and Aladdin. But the next entry in the series is now a go, with a third film that will bring Downey Jr. and Jude Law back as Holmes and Watson – and the filmmaker behind it is Dexter Fletcher.
It will mark Fletcher’s follow-up to Elton John biopic-musical Rocketman, and give the filmmaker his blockbuster-iest material yet. He’s already proven himself an adept genre-hopper, having moved from indie film Wild Bill, to Scottish musical Sunshine On Leith, to feel-good sports movie Eddie The Eagle, to an all-singing all-dancing, sex-drugs-rock-and-roll blow-out. Variety reports that Downey Jr.’s post-Endgame schedule is making it much easier for the third Sherlock Holmes to happen.
The Sherlock Holmes 3 script is being written by Chris Brancato, with a proposed December 2021 release date currently pencilled in.