A suspect report in The Sun has indicated that Russell Crowe may be the man to play Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming take on legendary literary detective Sherlock Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. is already on board to play the legendary detective and according to “an insider”…

“Russell wants the part [Dr. Watson], Guy wants Russell. All they’ve got left to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

It also appears that RocknRolla director Ritchie will be taking on the material with a very modern touch by basing it on an upcoming comic book and liberally loading it with martial-arts action with Holmes and Watson becoming, in Downey Jr.’s words, “bad-asses”. The lead man is quoted as saying…

“I’ve got to spend some time with Guy and I love his take on it. We’re both martial arts enthusiasts and in the original stories of Sherlock Holmes, he’s kind of a bad-ass and a bare-knuckle boxer and studies the rare fictional martial art of baritsu. If you look baritsu up, they can’t even really tell you what it is, so it gives us a lot of leeway.”

As a man who has catapulted to golden boy status at the box-office after his star turn in Iron Man and subsequent success with Tropic Thunder, it’s hard to doubt Downey Jr.’s conviction in Ritchie’s revision of  Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation. Though a thoroughly modern modification of the master crime-solver may worry traditionalists, Downey Jr. remarks…

“It’s a period piece where you don’t modernise it, you just realise how modern it was.”

If Crowe does join up as another big-name cast member then hype for this movie will undoubtedly build and boost its global prospects; a problem for Ritchie’s films in the past. The dynamic Robert Downey Jr. is an inspired choice for the leading role and it’d definitely be pretty strong paiting having Crowe be Watson to his Sherlock. If Ritchie can channel that elementary street-smart character, vivid, edgy energy and resolute Britishness from the rest of his oeuvre into this project, then the new Sherlock Holmes movie could be something quite spectacular to savour.

This article is sponsored by The Movie Forum