Sir Ian McKellen has agreed to star in A Slight Trick on the Mind, in which he will play a retired Sherlock Holmes. The film will be directed by Twilight helmer Bill Condon.
Screen Daily reports that the film will be produced by Anne Carey and her new Archer Gray Productions, with Iain Canning and Emile Sherman of See-Saw Films and Aviv Giladi, CEO of Icon/AI Film. BBC Films also boarded the project as a co-financier. BBC Films’ Christine Langdon will executive produce with Len Blavatnik. Shooting will start in April.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story features an aging Holmes who is reminded of an unsolved, 50-year-old case. He remembers few details, but knows it involves a husband and an unstable wife. Holmes’ talents are fading and he doesn’t have Watson to help, but he still tries to solve the mystery. It is based on Mitch Cullin’s novel and the script was written by Jeffrey Hatcher.
Condon and McKellen have worked together before. McKellen earned an Oscar nomination for Gods and Monsters, which won Condon the Oscar for adapted screenplay in 1999. Condon’s recent credits include the last two Twilight films and the upcoming WikiLeaks drama The Fifth Estate.
McKellen is currently working on X-Men: Days of Future Past and just wrapped filming on the last Hobbit films.
image: Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images for Jameson/image.net