Robert Downey Jr. officially named Ritchie's Sherlock

photo courtesy Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Drum roll please, dear Watson. The newest actor to take on the Sherlock Holmes role is none other than the Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., in Guy Ritchie’s new Sherlock Holmes flick. 

Ritchie’s film for Warner Bros. Pictures will be a serious adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective stories and Lionel Wigram’s upcoming Sherlock Holmes comic book. Ritchie’s Holmes will reportedly be a reinvention of the pipe-smoking, magnifying-glass toting investigator. The new Holmes solves crime mysteries while also showing off skills as a boxer and a swordsman. It’s a fitting for a man most recently in the news as a comic book action hero in this summer’s Iron Man.

Downey’s newest role announcement comes just after Sacha Baron Cohen was announced in the role of Holmes alongside Will Ferrell’s turn as sidekick Dr. John H. Watson in a new comedy by Judd Apatow. Columbia Pictures will release the comedic actors’ new work, the first since 2006’s Talladega Nights, in which Baron Cohen and Ferrell played rival racecar drivers.

The dueling Sherlocks, one drama and one comedy, mean that Ritchie is moving quickly into production in order to compete with Apatow’s film. Ritchie’s film, written by Anthony Peckham, is scheduled to go into production in October of this year. No word yet on who will play Dr. Watson, but we suspect a line-up will be available somewhere in the blogosphere shortly.

Related links:
News: Guy Ritchie does Sherlock Holmes
Robert Downey Jr. music on Sony Music
Robert Downey Jr. on IMDb

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