

Sherlock Holmes was proving a tough nut to crack though.Īmongst the scribes brought in were Nicole Perlman (who was put in charge, off the back of her work on Guardians Of The Galaxy), as well as Rogue One’s Gary Whitta and Tomb Raider’s Geneva Robertson-Dworet. This was the era where writers’ rooms were being hired to crack the stories for franchise features, but even then, not for one single film. Still, a writers’ room of scribblers was reportedly brought together to try and crack the script. In fact, by the end of 2016, it was almost as if they’d admitted some degree of defeat and gone back to square one with Sh3rlock. When it was being talked up for shooting in 2016, there was a growing sense of believe it when I see it, and that was not proven to be an unwise approach. It’s said that there’s a moment in the filmmaking process where everything needs to come together – the studio, the creatives, the script, sheer good luck – and that magical combination continued to evade the project. Yet Sherlock Holmes 3 kept falling into limbo, as other projects appeared to take priority. Against that backdrop, producer Joel Silver was happy to tease the idea of even more movies as he was out promoting 2016’s The Nice Guys. In came James Coyne to take a fresh stab at the screenplay just weeks later. Move forward several years, and Robert Downey Jr was insisting in 2016 that the project was a live one and even might shoot that year. In 2012, producer Dan Lin said they were just waiting on the screenplay, for instance. Inevitably, whenever they had a film out, questions came up about continuing the franchise, and an underlying keenness kept coming through. Yet even in the midst of all of this, the creatives were given opportunities to shoot down the possibility of Sherlock Holmes 3, but didn’t.
SHERLOCK HOLMES 3 SERIES
Separately, Guy Ritchie found himself attached to a series of huge blockbusters – Aladdin, that really odd King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, the fan favourite The Man From UNCLE (the latter two intended to be franchise-starters in their own rights) – and his schedule crammed up too. Downey Jr’s schedule would go on to be blamed often for the assorted delays, even though he managed to slip in several other projects around his Marvel work.
SHERLOCK HOLMES 3 MOVIE
Some of them fairly obvious, given that Robert Downey Jr was by now one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and had a slate of projects both for Marvel and then for his own production company (Team Downey) that required his attention. Yet a third Sherlock Holmes film kept hitting obstacles.

After all, another hit series – Elementary – also popped along, and earned itself a comfortable living. But several other reasons for delays sprung up.Īppreciating that the hugely popular and successful Sherlock television series came along in 2010 and itself took up some of 221b Baker Street’s oxygen, there still seemed little reason the two shouldn’t co-exist. Suddenly, a film grossing half a billion dollars didn’t look quite as impressive, bizarrely. Drew Pearce had been hired to pen a script, with both Downey Jr and Law oftentimes expressing interest in returning to the franchise.īut what this began was a decade-and-change list of false starts, set against a changing ecosystem of film and TV. In fact, even before A Game Of Shadows landed in cinemas, Warner Bros was moving towards at the least completing a trilogy. Directed by Guy Ritchie, and reuniting Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, it laid a very clear commercial and critical path to a third film. It was on December 16 th 2011 that Warner Bros released the sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows into worldwide cinemas, returning a handsome profit for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow Pictures (with over half a billion dollars banked) by the time its run was complete. The world is getting back up to speed and people's schedules are filling up again.Try three issues of Film Stories magazine – for just £1: right here! It does appear that Fletcher is using some vague and cautious language here, though, so keep expectations in check if you're really champing at the bit for another Downey Sherlock adventure. Even the most sly detective was thrown for a loop by lockdown, apparently, and it also tracks that this would be a priority for Warner Bros. It makes sense that the pandemic screwed everything up for Sherlock. But I believe it should be because it's brilliant.

But I know that the appetite is huge for it, and I'm sure there are other people acutely aware of that as well. It's one of those cruel twists of fate, where the pandemic hit and that scattered people around the world to the wind. I think it's about all the right people being at the right place, at the right time. I don't know what the timeline of that is, unfortunately, but I believe it should be.
