A strangely quiet but extremely important news item was leaked onto the web earlier this week but I’ve only myself just stumbled across it because of Filmstalker.

Guy Ritchie, whose career I don’t think I have ever been this excited about in years (come on, Rock”N”Rolla looks pretty damn awesome), has cast the main villain for his exciting Sherlock Holmes project which will star the “never been this popular” Robert Downey Jr.

Said actor is Mark Strong. He is British, born in London, 45 and looks something like this….

That’s right, he was one of the main supporting parts in Ritchie’s good pal Matthew Vaughn’s movie Stardust and previously appeared in Ritchie’s much hated gangster movie Revolver.

He also appears in Rock”N”Rolla.

He’s a terrific actor who has a decade of great supporting roles behind him and has a face that can really adapt to any time period or genre.

Could he be playing Prof. Moriarty, or for the first movie is Ritchie going to avoid the tantalising carrot of using the most famous (and for many the only one known) villain in Arthur Conan Doyle’s series much like Christopher Nolan did with leaving out The Joker in Batman Begins.

After all, Ritchie is rebooting this franchise, maybe a new villain is in order and if they are smart they could do a Blofeld thing and maybe have him behind-the-scenes and be introduced as a bigger villain later on.

More on this as we get it, I’m surprised the news didn’t reach further across the web.