While Warner Bros. and the team behind the “Sherlock Holmes” franchise have had the desire to make a third installment, cracking the script has proven challenging. Jude Law once pitched a time-travel idea which was very politely turned down by director Guy Ritchie, and while Robert Downey Jr. optimistically said this spring that “Sherlock Holmes 3” could shoot this year, that’s obviously not happening. In fact, it’s back to the drawing board.
Screenwriters Nicole Perlman (“Guardians of the Galaxy”), Justin Malen (“Baywatch”), Gary Whitta (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”), Geneva Dworet-Robertson (“Tomb Raider”) and Kieran Fitzgerald (“Snowden”) have been tapped by the studio, Village Roadshow and Team Downey to form a writers room for “Sherlock Holmes 3.” While this kind of approach is usually taken with franchises (see “Transformers” and Universal‘s brewing monster movie-verse), the idea here is get the best ideas down all at once, instead of sending a screenplay through multiple rewrites and polishes.
I suppose that makes sense, but those names can’t come cheap, and I can only imagine the budget merely for the development process of “Sherlock Holmes 3” is going to be quite high. However, I can only surmise that if more than one strong idea is hatched, Warner Bros. certainly won’t stop anyone from laying out the foundation for a fourth or fifth movie.
“Sherlock Holmes 3” is still without a release date, but hopefully in the months ahead the quintet of writers will finally get the sequel on track. [Variety]