Put on your deerstalker and load up your pipe.
It's time to determine the facts of the latest Sherlock Holmes case.
"Is it a cap?
Why's it got two fronts?"
"It's a deerstalker."
A report from We Got This Covered indicates that Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law's Sherlock
Holmes and Dr. Watson will return to face an American nemesis named Senator Cornelius
Guest, a man obsessed with stealing gold, in the third installment of the big-screen
Sherlock Holmes franchise.
A villain obsessed with gold in the third installment of a franchise?
Huh.
That sounds familiar.
"I love goooooold!"
Anyway, they'll possibly be traveling to the United States to take on the gold-obsessed
Senator.
HN Entertainment first reported the rumor back in March 2019 that Holmes and Watson
will be going to San Francisco, specifically.
Official word on the project is scarce, as it's been languishing in pre-production for
close to a decade due to Robert Downey Jr.'s rather crowded schedule full of Marvel projects.
The time is now ripe for speculation, though, as production is slated to begin in January
2020.
So will we see the immortal detective visit the Wild Wild West for our viewing pleasure?
The game is afoot.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing to disprove nor confirm the rumor.
It's entirely possible that the name "Senator Cornelius Guest" is a cover to maintain secrecy,
and it's worth mentioning that Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows included the iconic Reichenbach
Falls scenario also featured in the BBC's Sherlock series in which Holmes and his arch-nemesis
Professor Moriarty are both presumed dead.
The scenario was inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tale "The Final Problem."
In that story and most of its adaptations, the detective always survives, while Moriarty
isn't so lucky.
But one shouldn't immediately assume that Game of Shadows' version of the character,
played by Jared Harris, couldn't return.
"That doesn't bode well, does it?"
The Sherlock Holmes 3 script has passed through many, many hands in the years that RDJ has
been occupied in the Iron Man suit, so all bets are off as to exactly where it's going
to land, plot-wise.
It's quite possible that a draft brought Holmes to America, but is it the final one?
Nothing is certain until new director Dexter Fletcher or Warner Bros. makes an official
announcement.
To the casual eye reviewing the rumor, it might feel a touch like it's blowing up the
concept to have the English detective appear in America, dealing with an American antagonist.
Arthur Conan Doyle never sent Holmes to America on a case, but it is implied that after throwing
himself off of Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty, he spent some time overseas before coming
back to give Watson the shock of his life.
And Doyle's first Holmes novel, A Study In Scarlet, features several American characters
and an extended flashback of their lives within the Mormon church in Utah.
Doyle had a personal fascination with the U.S., and cited famous American detective
and friend William J. Burns as "the American Sherlock Holmes."
Holmes' last name is itself a nod to American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Guy Ritchie, the director of the first two films in the series, never seemed interested
in directly adapting Doyle's Holmes stories.
Both his films cherry picked the characters we were most likely to recognize and remixed
them with semi-historical context.
For example, the first flick's villain, Lord Blackwood, seems like an off-brand version
of Jack the Ripper.
Ritchie's films also winkingly referenced the life of Doyle himself.
Holmes paid the bills for Doyle and ultimately made him very wealthy, but he never loved
Holmes the way the public did.
He was forever bitter that his books about history, fairies, and spiritualism — his
true passions — were nowhere near as popular as his detective stories.
Ritchie incorporated a lot of occult concepts and historical remixes into these stories
as his own kind of homage, which might have been lost on viewers who hadn't read much
of Doyle's other work.
"There was never any magic!
Only conjuring tricks!"
We're going to go ahead and categorize this product of the rumor mill as a firm "maybe."
Of course, once official news breaks about the plot, setting and title of Sherlock Holmes
3, we'll be here to investigate every clue.
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