Guy Ritchie to Direct Sherlock Holmes Reinvention

So a couple months ago, when it appeared that Natalie Portman would make Wuthering Heights, I threw out a wish list of literature that's aching to be remade. We listed Tale of Two Cities, a Pixar Animal Farm, Slaughterhouse Five, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and a resurrection of Sherlock Holmes.

We're now one-fifth of the way there.

I'm not doing backflips about the assignment of Guy Ritchie as the director, but Sherlock Holmes will be back in theaters in 2010, according to Variety. Warner Bros. is making the film, called simply Sherlock Holmes, based on Lionel Wigram's not-yet-released comic book. I get turning up the volume a little bit - after all, the character is 125 years old or something - but the new generation Holmes sound too much like an action hero to me: "...(E)xecs at Warners are aiming to reinvent Holmes and sidekick Dr. John H. Watson. Wigram's noted that the new Holmes would be more adventuresome and take advantage of his skills as a boxer and swordsman." My only issue with that is, Jesus Christ, how could you ignore Arthur Conan Doyle's source material? Maybe if you mix some of the new characterizations into the original four novels, you'd have something. I can't see Holmes not on the case for The Hound of the Baskervilles or fighting Professor Moriarty (one of fiction's most underrated villains) at Reichenbach Falls. I think you have to start with Study of Scarlet and move forward. We don't know exactly what the storyline will be yet, but I'm hoping for the best and bracing for the worst. As for Guy Ritchie, we've said countless times that he's a question mark. If Rocknrolla can't do the trick this year and turn his luck around, he will have officially been in a career tailspin since Snatch. It's not like his style is a good fit, and I genuinely don't want super slumping guy directing a Sherlock Holmes movie, not when the potential is so great for a possible ready-made franchise.

Comments

[Will]

This is the subplot of an actual "good" movie...right? (sorta like "Machete!" in Grindhouse?)

Okay...so only half of Grindhouse was worth watching, and sadly, not the Tarrantino half.

Sigh.