UNITED KINGDOM: Robert Downney Jnr breaths new life into the role of Sherlock Holmes, UK premiere

Record ID: 220476

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Robert Downney Jnr breaths new life into the role of Sherlock Holmes, UK premiere
  • Date: 16th December 2009
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (DECEMBER 14, 2009) (REUTERS) EMPIRE CIMEMA MOVIE FANS AT THE PREMIERE PRESS AT THE RED CARPET FANS DIRECTOR GUY RITCHIE RACHEL MCADAMS ROBERT DOWNEY JNR JUDE LAW (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR JUDE LAW SAYING: "I think we have done a terrific job, we have certainly set out to do what we have set out to do which was to marry the idea
  • Embargoed: 31st December 2009 12:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA5IGCRIOE2O0BE9KTKQ0E52ZSW
  • Story Text: The clocks were turned back to Victorian times as the entrance to the Empire, Leicester Square was filled with wooden creates and ropes, whilst old-fashioned flame lamps and smoke filled the air in an effort to creat an ideal atmosphere for the world premiere of Sherlock Holmes on Monday night (December 14).
    Movie fans where out in force to welcome Robert Downey Jnr., Jude Law and Guy Ritchie to the premiere.
    Downey Jnr. plays the super sleuth while Law takes on the role of his ally Dr John Watson.
    "I think we have done a terrific job," Jude Law told Reuters at the premiere. "We have certainly set out to do what we have set out to do which was to marry the idea of taking this to a new audience using cinema as a way of embracing the drama and the action of Conan Doyle's Holmes, but also going back and discovering material that has so far being left unchartered."
    The Warner Bros. production, which opens on Christmas Day in the United States, is widely expected to become a major new franchise for the studio just as the lucrative Harry Potter series comes to a close in 2011.
    U.S. actor Robert Downey Jnr. adds punch to the role of Sherlock Holmes in an action-packed movie that breaks with what its makers called "stuffy" screen interpretations of the fictional English detective.
    Fellow actress Rachel McAdams believes that audience will love Downey Jnr.'s and Law's portrayal of Holmes and Watson:
    "They have that sexy brawn, and they have wild intelligence and they have this great friendship which is really quite sexy too I think, they have this great chemistry between them, so I think it is a great reinvention and I think people will be happy with their interpretation of those characters.
    Downey Jnr.'s Holmes is a physical, fist fighting, streetwise version of the supersleuth in an attempt by director Ritchie to ditch common associations of pipe smoking, deerstalker hats and the famous phrase "elementary my dear Watson".
    "There is this certain feeling about it and it is kind of like, I would like to hang out with that guy, and I think that these guys are a little bit 'street', kind of smart and also visually very interesting,"
    The storyline of the latest Holmes film centres around a new character Lord Blackwood, an unrepentant killer sentenced to death but who apparently returns from the grave to haunt 1890s London and hatch a plot that could destroy the country.
    Professor Moriarty, Holmes's nemesis in the original Conan Doyle tales, is expected to appear in subsequent instalments should the franchise materialise.
    The film opens across British cinemas on Boxing Day (December 26) and the United States on Christmas Day (December 25).
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