- The Guardian, Thursday 3 July 2008
On film it has always been about the urbane, gentlemanly Basil Rathbone; on TV it was the beaky, occasionally irascible Jeremy Brett. But the next incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth is to be rather a different proposition: Sacha Baron Cohen, it was reported in Variety yesterday, is to take the role of Sherlock Holmes in a forthcoming film.
Baron Cohen, whose Borat was one of the cinematic hits of 2006, also appeared earlier this year alongside Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton's blood-soaked version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. He played the oleaginous, charlatan Italian barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, whom Sweeney Todd challenges to a shaving competition.
Baron Cohen's film version of Sherlock Holmes is to be a comedy, with Will Ferrell as his Watson. Guy Ritchie, of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame, is to direct. The film is as yet untitled, and is expected to be released in 2010.
Aside from Borat, the Kazakh reporter, another of Baron Cohen's characters from the Da Ali G Show is being turned into a film. His Austrian fashionista creation, Brüno, will be the centre of a film to be released next year. In the film, Brüno takes his fashion show to the US.
Borat - its full title is Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - saw Baron Cohen's character travel round the US encountering real Americans.
