Re-Imagining "Sherlock Holmes" for the Big Screen

CEBU, Philippines - In a dynamic new portrayal of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters, Warner Bros.’ new action-adventure “Sherlock Holmes” sends genius detective Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his stalwart partner Watson (Jude Law) on their latest challenge. Revealing fighting skills as lethal as his legendary intellect, Holmes will battle to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy all of England.

In the following interview, the film’s producers – lead by the legendary Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram and Susan Downey – discuss the latest and most riveting screen incarnation of “Sherlock Holmes.”

Question: How did this Sherlock Holmes movie come to be?

Lionel Wigram: Well, I’ve been a fan of Sherlock Holmes since my dad read the books to me when I was about nine years old. And I always thought it’d be great to make a Sherlock Holmes movie.  I tried for several years and I could never figure out exactly how to do it. And when I became a producer I reread all the stories and I realized that there was a new way to do Sherlock. I made a comic book, which was really a way to show, again, how cool and fun Sherlock could be. I brought it to Warner Bros. and we went from there. And then Joel and Susan got involved, and Robert Downey and Rachel McAdams, and Guy Ritchie. And we made this wonderful movie.

Joel Silver: It’s really great. Robert Downey really is genius in this role. He made it come to life. He and Jude, and Rachel and Guy, made a fantastic movie. 

Q: Can we expect an original mystery crafted especially for the film, or did you pull from the books to create the plot of the movie?

Susan Downey: Basically the universe that it’s set in is from the books, but the actual narrative is unique to this movie. And it was something that Lionel came up with in the inception when he did this comic book thing to sell the studio on. And we definitely enhanced and developed from there. But it was within the kind of wheelhouse and world that Conan Doyle created. The mystery was kind of informed by the time period. And the villain came out of influences of the time.

Wigram: We drew heavily on the Victorian obsession with the occult for this particular story. And there’s a guy called Alastair Crowley, who our bad guy is based on, played by Mark Strong, who is amazing in the movie. And everything in the story, all the character stuff comes from stuff in the books originally. We really tried to be faithful to that. And anything that Holmes does in the movie in terms of action, is referred to in the books. 

Q: Is there an emphasis on the Victorian technology of the time in the film? 

Silver: To an extent. We’re going back to the source material. It really is a movie that’s like 1891, but it’s as if we shot it then. There’s no artifice. It feels like it’s shot in 1891. There is a part of the Industrial Revolution that’s happening then, but it’s not so much what’s going on and it’s not like the details are that deliberate. But Sherlock does know more than anybody else. And he figures things out. There’s a great line in the movie where someone says to him, “Holmes, how did you see that?” He says, “I was looking for it.” And that’s the perfect Holmesian moment.

Wigram: Just to add to that, we tried to keep the gadgets, if you like, authentic to the times—the technology is stuff that you would’ve seen in that time and stuff that was invented around that time. 

Q: Can you talk about what Guy Ritchie brought as a director? 

Downey: Guy is a character. Joel and I had worked with him on “RocknRolla” but obviously this is a much bigger movie—the scope of the movie, the time we had to shoot it, the money we had to make it and all that. And what’s really great about Guy is he has a sense of what the feel, the vibe, the tone is going to be, which is what you’ll see reflected in his movies. He was also very conscious that he was being given an opportunity to show kind of a different side of himself as a director. So I think you’re going to recognize his sense of style, but it’s going to be brought to a whole new level. 

(Opening soon across the Philippines, “Sherlock Holmes” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.)