Starring opposite Robert Downey Jr in the next Sherlock Holmes film? That’ll be Stephen Fry, who’s playing Mr Mycroft Holmes…
A major piece of casting for the forthcoming Sherlock Holmes 2 movie has fallen into place, with the news that Stephen Fry is set to take the role of Mycroft.
Mycroft is, of course, Holmes' older brother (and was played by Mark Gatiss in the recent BBC modern day take on the stories), and Fry revealed the news of his casting on Radio Five Live over the weekend.
Fry also seemed non-committal on whether Guy Ritchie will, indeed, be returning to direct Sherlock Holmes 2. We suspect he will, but as he told Radio Five Live, "I'm playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun, but just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar [Wilde] had was a once in a lifetime thrill."
Fry will join a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and Noomi Rapace, and the film is set to start shooting soon, given that it's due in cinemas on 16th December 2011.