The single greatest crime fighter and mystery solver in the history of fiction isn’t Batman… it’s Sherlock Holmes. Yes, the man who could tell what you had for breakfast 6 Tuesdays ago just by looking at the color of your tie is THE MAN. My dad loved Sherlock Holmes stories, and every once in a while I would read his book that was lying around.
So it looks like WB is brining the world’s greatest detective back to the big screen. That’s AMAZING news. But I’m a bit nervous too. The good folks at movieweb report this:
Neil Marshall will direct the Michael Johnson screenplay. The exact storyline is being kept under wraps, but creative execs at Warners say they are looking for the “Sherlock” team to reinvent the sleuth and his loyal No. 2 Dr. Watson in much the same edgy way that Christopher Nolan has reimagined Batman for Warners, notes Variety.
Now, what do they mean “reinvent”? Do they actually mean the Batman Begins kind (just minor changes to reinvigorate the character) or do they mean the Battlestar Galactica kind (that pretty much re-boots everything except the main story arc)?
I REALLY don’t think Sherlock Holmes needs a full reboot. His character is timeless and damned near perfect. This isn’t a Star Trek scenario where the thing has been over played, become dry and boring and has gradualing been losing large numbers of it’s fans while failing to gain any new ones.
Holmes is different. He hasn’t had 6 movies and 4 TV shows in the last 10 years. The market hasn’t become over-saturated with his stories… as a matter of fact it’s quite the opposite… most people today don’t know his stories at all.
Bottom line – I hope the story is true, and they they just mean “reinvent” the same way they did it for Batman. Oh, and as a side note… you should go out and rent “Without A Clue“. It’s a Sherlock Holmes comedy that imagines Holmes was an idiot and Dr. Watson was actually the genius. Played brilliantly by Michael Cain as Holmes and Ben Kingsley as Watson.
