Ah, the early 2010s, when Sherlock dominated TV discourse—on Tumblr, at least—and everyone was furiously shipping Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John Watson (Martin Freeman) for four seasons and a feature-length TV Christmas special. At the peak of its popularity, the season 3 Sherlock premiere “The Empty Hearse” was watched by nearly 10 million people in the U.K. alone, and the show has to date accumulated a whopping 116,000 works of dedicated fanfiction on Archive of Our Own, plenty of which have been added or updated in the last month. Sherlock was once the moment, and a big part of that success was down to Mark Gatiss, who created and wrote the show together with Steven Moffat.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Gatiss, who also played Sherlock’s uptight brother Mycroft, was asked why they’d decided to adapt Sherlock—and other narratives, like Dracula—as an ongoing TV (mini)series rather than a film. His answer was succinct, yet he also teased interest in taking Sherlock one step further:
“People think you can just wave a wand. It’s incredibly difficult to get people interested and get films made. I remember talking to Edgar Wright about Ant-Man, into which he put eight years of his life and then didn’t make. Eight years is not short of a decade. Add a few of those up, you’re dead and you’ve made four films. But, also, we were genuinely interested in making them for TV because we love TV. We would love to make a Sherlock movie. It’s the natural thing to do.”
Edgar Wright’s battle with Marvel is well-documented and certainly one example of how hard it is to get a movie made. And, with Cumberbatch and Freeman’s ongoing popularity—both have since starred in numerous feature films, including The Hobbit movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe—they’re harder to book now than ever before. Yet Gatiss isn’t the only one interested in reviving Sherlock, either as a movie or for a fifth season. Last year, co-creator Steven Moffat told RadioTimes.com that he’d bring back the series “tomorrow” if Cumberbatch and Freeman ever become available at the same time.
Perhaps bringing them both back for a final Sherlock movie as opposed to a full season could be just the ticket. Making a single two-hour movie would take less time than producing three feature-length TV episodes, and could make it easier for the stars to be available simultaneously.
For the time being, of course, this is all hypothetical, though there are plenty of Sherlock Holmes stories left for Gatiss and Moffat to adapt. Author Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a total of 62 Sherlock Holmes adventures, and any one of them could be suitable for a modern retelling. A lot has changed in the world since the series ended in 2017, and it could be very interesting to see how Cumberbatch’s version of the greatest living detective deals with it all.
Holmes adaptations are still as popular as ever—just look at the success of Netflix’s Enola Holmes films, or the continued interest in a third installment of Guy Ritchie’s and Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes movies. The return of Gatiss and Moffat’s Sherlock would undoubtedly pique our collective curiosity.
(via The Guardian, featured image: BBC)
