Guy Ritchies Sherlock Holmes (Rumours and Discussion)


Recommended Posts

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Mark Strong Reveals Details on Sherlock Holmes Villain

We're still waiting to see a trailer for Sherlock Holmes, so until that shows up, all that we know about it comes from past news articles or interviews. Last year when I interviewed British actor Mark Strong, he mentioned that he was shooting Sherlock Holmes with Guy Ritchie, but didn't say too much about his character. Total Film (the article has since been removed) got to talk to Strong again recently and not only found out more about his character, known as Lord Blackwood, but also about some of the ending moments in the film, which we are of course not going to mention. So instead, let's find out more about this villain.

In Sherlock Holmes, Lord Blackwood is a occult-dabbling Satanist who ends up fighting Holmes.

"There's a touch of Dracula about him," Strong told Total Film. "He needed to have an element of showmanship about him by virtue of the fact that he's trying to persuade everyone around him that he's so in league with the Devil that he's able to conquer death. I just wanted to make him an equal adversary of Sherlock Holmes."

Considering Mark Strong is one of the finest underrated and unknown actors around, I don't think he'll have any problem making him an equal adversary, especially opposite Robert Downey Jr. Strong also admits that Blackwood is somewhat based on the real life Aleister Crowley, a British occultist who wrote The Book of the Law and became known as "The Wickedest Man In the World." I'm not familiar with that reference, but I am looking forward to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and I'm a big fan of Mark Strong, so I'm excited anyway. I'm sure he'll be one hell of a dark and creepy Holmesian villain and I can't wait to see him big screen.

  • 4 weeks later...

Trailer was shown to ShoWest

Sometimes, ShoWest does pull out a few unexpected surprises, and while it was always known that Warner Bros. President and COO Alan Horn would be giving the welcome remarks at the State of the Industry Update, he used his time to also give a preview of some of Warner Bros.' upcoming movies, including showing the first footage of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams.

An even bigger surprise was the actual presence of Downey, who took a break from preparing for Iron Man 2 to introduce the footage to the theater owners in the audience. After coming out to applause and being hugged by Horn, Downey Jr. joked that Horn hugs him every time he sees him now though that it wasn't always that way.

Before showing the footage, he told the audience how he came to the project, how after the opening weekend of Iron Man, he was told he probably could do anything he wanted to do "for the next hour and a half," so he went to Joel Silver, who gave Downey his first job 25 years ago (Weird Science), and gave him some ideas what he might be interested in doing. He learned about Guy Ritchie's plans to update Sherlock Holmes. Ritchie thought that Downey was too old for the role, but Downey convinced him and then also convinced him that Rachel McAdams wasn't too young to play his love interest. (He made a joke about using "Benjamin Button"-like CG to minimize their age difference.) Downey claimed that part of the reason Ritchie's movie will be different from the previous incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character is that besides going back to the original source material, the other projects never had the money to do it correctly.

The footage, a pseudo teaser-trailer, that followed had never been shown before, although we did glimpse a few scenes we saw being filmed and that were shown to ComingSoon.net/Superhero Hype! during our set visit last year, including Holmes' bare-knuckle fight and the early fight with Blackwood's henchmen. Otherwise, there was a lot of information going by very fast, as is always the case, so we tried to take notes and remember what we could.

It opens with eerie music and shadowy scenes of Victorian London and we see a shot of Downey's Holmes running down a spiral staircase and another of him smoking his trademark pipe as a voice-over tells Holmes that he needs to "widen his gaze" because he's underestimating the "gravity of coming events." The voiceover tells Holmes that at the dawn of the new day, the world as he knows it would end, to which Holmes responds playfully, "Well, there isn't any time to waste then" and he jumps out the window.

We get a brief glimpse of Eddie Marsan's Inspector LeStrade saying something about someone seeing Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong's villain in the film) rising from the grave, and Holmes is asked to find and stop him, which Holmes claims will "take every ounce of my not inconsiderable experience." To that, LeStrade comes back with a slam about it maybe being a hobby to Holmes, but that he does it for a living. (This confirms what Marsan told us last year about their working relationship not being a particularly friendly one.)

Holmes says that he needs to have someone with him that he can thoroughly trust, at which point we see him greeting Jude Law's Dr. Watson and we get a bit of the rapport between them, as the two of them squabble about the things roommates normally argue over, Law complaining about Holmes playing the violin late at night and his "lack of hygiene."

After that, we get a bit of the interaction between Holmes and Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler, as they scuffle, her pulling out an ornament from which sharp blades jut out to threaten Holmes. That interaction ends with him left chained to a bed. Watson finds him in that state and asks, "Holmes, does your depravity know no bounds?" to which Holmes replies, "No." (Later we see Adler in a very sexy outfit, as McAdams' credit is shown.)

Another scene shows Holmes facing a much larger opponent, who looked like Nathan Jones, the giant from the opening of Troy, atop what looked like a clock tower. Jones is wielding an enormous sledgehammer while Holmes is carrying just a standard everyday hammer, which he promptly throws at the giant hoping that would do some damage. (It doesn't, and the giant attacks.) This scene got a huge laugh from the audience.

There was a quick-cut montage of more action scenes before a scene where a maid walks into a room and screams, dropping the tray she was carrying. We cut to Downey chained to a bed naked except for a pillow covering his genitals, and he asks her to remain calm and that under the pillow is the "key to his release" and the shocked woman runs out screaming.

It was a very funny and exciting first look at what will surely be Guy Ritchie's most high profile film to date, and it got a great reaction from the exhibitors in attendance. It'll be interesting to see where and when this teaser trailer will surface, as it definitely did its job in showing what the movie is all about.

Sherlock Holmes opens on Christmas Day. Look for more from ComingSoon.net/Superhero Hype!'s visit to the set shortly.

Rachel McAdams :wub:

This sounds like it's going to be great.

Yeah she's so cool, I think I only saw the lovefest named the notebook for her and of course Mean Girls which is win.

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Kicking ass and calling names? That is NOT how I remember the books, nor would I want to see a Sherlock Holmes like that. Sherlock is a genius inspector, not a James Bond. He solves mysteries using his brain, not his brawn. I hope to god they don't make him all out action. That would ruin the movie then and there.

Kicking ass and calling names? That is NOT how I remember the books, nor would I want to see a Sherlock Holmes like that. Sherlock is a genius inspector, not a James Bond. He solves mysteries using his brain, not his brawn. I hope to god they don't make him all out action. That would ruin the movie then and there.

When he started with the idea he said it would be loosely based on the Sherlock universe and its based on a graphic novel I think that's not even out yet.

Kicking ass and calling names? That is NOT how I remember the books, nor would I want to see a Sherlock Holmes like that. Sherlock is a genius inspector, not a James Bond. He solves mysteries using his brain, not his brawn. I hope to god they don't make him all out action. That would ruin the movie then and there.

Wasn't he really good at hand-to-hand combat in the book? He did go to quite a number of place to chase after his nemesis. Then again, it has been a while since I've last read the books so I might have to pick it up again just to refresh my memory.

Scirwode

Yeah he knew a fighting style, watch the old Jeremy Brett show if you can that was a pretty spot on Sherlock Holmes

I don't really know which one was that :p . Back in the 80's, I was glued to my TV watching Mind Your Language :rofl: !

Scirwode

I don't really know which one was that :p . Back in the 80's, I was glued to my TV watching Mind Your Language :rofl: !

Scirwode

Oh I wasn't it either only recently have I been rewatching them all on our local channels.

jeremy_brett.jpg

Oh I wasn't it either only recently have I been rewatching them all on our local channels.

jeremy_brett.jpg

I seem to remember that one, though I have to refresh my memory a bit more. Oh, and now you've gone and made me search for it :p .

Scirwode

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • The laptop in the bedroom is an Acer with i7-10510U CPU. Acer's website states they will not be upgrading it so I had little choice other than disable secure boot. I know next to nothing on these matters so hopefully it will be fine.
    • GitHub removes manual model selection from Copilot free and student plans by Karthik Mudaliar GitHub is removing the ability to manually select an AI model from its Copilot Free and Student plans, making its automatic routing system the default and only way to choose a model. This means users on these tiers will no longer be able to deliberately select a particular OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Microsoft model for a task. In its announcement, GitHub said Copilot Auto will dynamically choose what it considers the best model for each request. Free and Student accounts will retain access to models from multiple families, although the available selection will continue to depend on the restrictions attached to each plan. GitHub did not identify a fixed pool of models that Auto will always use, and its documentation warns that model availability can change over time. GitHub describes Auto as more than a random fallback system. On supported surfaces, its task-optimization technology evaluates the complexity of a request alongside real-time information about model health and availability. Straightforward prompts can be routed to faster and less expensive models, while more demanding coding tasks may be sent to higher-cost reasoning models. The company says this approach should reduce rate limiting, latency, and failed requests. Auto generally selects one model along natural prompt-caching boundaries rather than repeatedly switching models during a session, as GitHub found that mid-session changes increased costs without producing sufficient improvements in output quality. Users can still check which model generated a response. In Copilot Chat, the information appears when hovering over an answer, while Copilot CLI and the Copilot cloud agent display the selected model alongside their output. Auto is available in Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, and the cloud agent, with the exact implementation and release status varying between supported development environments. The latest restriction follows several months of adjustments to Copilot’s individual plans. GitHub temporarily halted new Pro, Pro+, and Student subscriptions in April as it sought to manage demand and service reliability. It later introduced token-based billing and began gradually reopening individual-plan registrations on June 17. Alongside the picker change, GitHub is retiring the “Preview” label from Microsoft-developed models. It argues that the label is no longer necessary because Auto handles model routing and models are continuously updated behind the scenes.
    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      Philsl earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      461
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!