Thanks to modern day small screen portrayals like Benedict Cumberbatch's in Sherlock and Jonny Lee Miller's in Elementary - not to mention big screen takes like Robert Downey Jr.'s in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies - we've gotten used to seeing younger versions of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective character. But next year director Bill Condon and Sir Ian McKellen will do their part to slice some more age variety into the mix. The director and actor are currently collaborating on a new film called Mr. Holmes, and, as you can see above, today we have our first look at McKellen in the titular role.
Formerly known as A Slight Trick of the Mind and based on the book of that name by American author Mitch Cullin, Mr. Holmes is set in 1947 and follows an elderly and retired Sherlock who is slowly losing both his ability to walk and to really think. He has his housekeeper and her young son to keep him company, but is slowly forgetting some amazing memories from a fascinating life. To insure that the stories live on, he begins to tell his housekeeper's son about his many thrilling adventures.
News about this project first circulated last September during the Toronto International Film Festival, where Condon was also debuting his latest him, The Fifth Estate. Joining Ian McKellen in the film is the always-wonderful Laura Linney, who will be playing the housekeeper, Mrs. Munro. The movie will be the fourth time that Linney and Condon have collaborated on a project together, having previously worked on Kinsey, The Fifth Estate and the pilot episode of the Showtime cancer comedy series The Big C. In addition to directing, Condon also wrote the script for Mr. Holmes, which many should see as good news considering that he's a former Oscar winner in that department, and won his trophy the last time he worked with Ian McKellen:
While this is the first time that McKellen has portrayed Sherlock Holmes on the big screen, it's also really just yet another name on the list of iconic characters that the actor has played in his career. In the last 20 years alone he has done his part to solidify himself as both Gandalf and Magneto in pop culture history. I wonder if he can have the same effect on the greatest detective fiction has ever seen.
If this picture and Twitter caption is any indication, Mr. Holmes is only starting to get into the production phase. Without a distributor attached, there is no current release date, but we can probably expect to see this one some time in 2015.
