Finally finished shepherding Hobbits through their various adventures, Sir Ian McKellen is taking on another of British genre fiction's most famous literary creations, as he joins the exponentially expanding list of actors to don the deerstalker cap of Sherlock Holmes. McKellen will reteam with Gods And Monsters director Bill Condon for A Slight Trick of the Mind, in which a long-retired Holmes reopens an unsolved case from fifty years earlier.
The detective's autumn years have been explored in the past, most notably in Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Final Problem" "His Last Bow," in which Holmes comes out of retirement to foil a German plot in WWI, and Michael Chabon's novella The Final Solution, in which a very elderly Holmes helps foil a German plot in WWII. We're still waiting for someone to round out the trilogy with a story in which Holmes is thawed from cryogenic storage to foil a German plot in WWIII. Get on it.
A Slight Trick Of The Mind is based on a novel by Mitch Cullin (so read that if you want spoilers). The film won't be out until at least next year, so it will probably be 2016 at the earliest before McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Downey Jr., and Hugh Laurie join up for an Avengers-style Holmes super team.