He’s still working on Doomsday, but Neil Marshall (for now better known as director of the Empire award winning The Descent) has found his next movie – further adventures of crime solving brain box Sherlock Holmes. He’ll be working from a script currently being forged by Michael Johnson, which in turn is adapted from an as yet unpublished comic book by Lionel Wigram, who Harry Potter fanatics will recognise as having a hand in producing the first three boy wizard adventures.
Details of the plot for the detective’s newest adventure are being kept under wraps, but so far we know that Dr Watson will definitely be included, and there will be a new focus on Homes’ physical abilities previously downplayed in other versions – skills like bare-knuckle boxing and swordsmanship. Looks like goodbye deerstalker, hello long blade. It’s all part of Warner Brothers’ approach in doing for the biggest franchise of them all (more than 200 stories in film and TV over the years) what they did for Batman a few years back with Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins.
But if you’re worried that they’ll go all silly with it, you probably shouldn’t. It’s all being done with the participation of the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with any and all rights issues already agreed to. And as Marshall, Wigram and Johnson are all Brits, expect a retention of good, British flavour (insert stereotypical joke about English cooking here).****