It doesn’t take the world’s greatest detective to deduce that recent revelations about Russell Crowe playing Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming Sherlock Holmes flick are nothing more than poppycock, but sometimes you really need to hear the facts from the horse’s mouth.
“I don’t have a Watson,” said Ritchie at the world premiere of his contemporary gangster flick RocknRolla. “Somebody just told me that I have Russell Crowe lined up but that’s news to me. I suspect that hasn’t happened and I’m still looking for my Watson.”
Well, with filming set to start in a month’s time, he’d better get a wriggle on and cast someone. But how is the rest of the production shaping up?
“Good, I’m very happy about it. We’ve got what I’d like to think are some of the best locations in London and with this film I get to show a whole new side to London. I’ve done contemporary and now I won’t be doing that, obviously.”
While a big question mark is still hanging over the head of his loyal confidante, the role of Holmes himself has long been filled by the god-like figure that is Robert Downey Jr. and who better to let us know how he’s shaping up for the role than his missus (and the film’s producer) Susan Downey?
“He’s been practicing how he’s going to sound, how he’s going to look and he’s pretty excited,” says Downey. “He’s going to get here in the middle of the month and he’s raring to get going.”
With four novels and 56 short stories written by sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there’s a catalogue of stories from which to mine, are they going to concentrate on any one in particular?
“It’s going to be an amalgamation of all those narratives,” says Ritchie.
“The world is within all the stories and it actually goes back to the books but the story is actually one that we made for the movie,” continues Downey. “What we can tell you is that he’s a badass in this movie alright. That’s what we’re going back to, any Holmes fan that we’ve spoken to is getting really excited about this one.”