Sir Ian McKellen to play Sherlock Holmes

He's all over the place these days isn't he, Sherlock Holmes? There's the crap Guy Ritchie version where he takes his shirt off and goes bare knuckle boxing with geezers in slow motion, and there's the utterly excellent BBC version where Benedict Cumberbatch swans about solving crime in a slim-fit blazer and giving the ladies his hard stare, and the frankly baffling Johnny Lee Miller American version where he's all tattooed and trying to get sexy with Lucy Liu as Watson. 

Well coming up is a new version. The old version. 

Sir Ian McKellen, from The Hobbit and X-Men and also some plays or something, has been cast as the great detective in A Slight Trick of the Mind. Based on the book of the same name by not Arthur Conan Doyle, we find Holmes convalescing in a leafy Sussex village and enjoying his retirement. Except he's not enjoying it, because there's this one case from years and years ago that he didn't crack and now, thanks to his advancing years, he's quite forgotten a lot of the details.

Aided by his housekeeper and her "amateur sleuthing" son, Holmes will pull on the deerstalker once more to finally bloody put the case to bed so he can himself go to bed. There's no Watson here either, so the ageing Holmes is going to have to summon all of his remaining mental wherewithall to get this one in the bag.

The movie will be directed by Oscar winner Bill Condon, who recently made Julian Assange biopic "The Fifth Estate" which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. World's collide!

Words by Gazz Wood

Gazz Wood is a writer from The Northern Film School at Leeds Met University. As well as writing for Wireless he can also be heard on the monthly podcast Possibly of Interest with TV Producer Howard Cohen and special guests from the world of British TV and Cinema, plus his own weekly show Gazz Wood Has A Podcast. He can also be followed on Twitter @GazzPH90