Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie has set aside the planned Lobo in order to clear his schedule for a fast-tracked Holmes sequel, according to producer Joel Silver.
Ritchie has his biggest commercial success with Holmes, and Warner Bros. wants to parlay that into a franchise as quickly as possible, Silver told The Los Angeles Times‘ Hero Complex blog yesterday. Silver is a producer of Holmes as well as Lobo, which would adapt the ultra-violent antihero from the pages of DC Comics.
“I don’t think he’s going to do it now,” Silver told the LAT of Ritchie directing Lobo. “The studio wants us and Guy to focus on making another Sherlock Holmes. So I think we’re going to be doing that. But we’re seeing what happens with this. Everybody is analyzing everything. It’s all kind of happening right now as we talk. Sherlock is sitting at just about $400 million in worldwide gross and showing itself to be pretty effective and pretty strong. So we’re trying to see if we can do something quickly with another Sherlock Holmes movie. We have some ideas and some good story points.”
Lobo in turn could go with a different director, Silver said. “It’s all happening at once now. Everybody is talking about everything…It’s an ongoing conversation. Downey loves the experience of playing Sherlock and would love to play him again, and I’d love to see him play it again. Jude and all of them will be back and it will be great.”
And what about that rumor that Brad Pitt would be in the Holmes sequel as Professor Moriarty? Silver was less than optimistic, telling the LAT: “Well, I mean, we talked about that at one point, but you know as of right now we’re not sure what we’re going to do. We’ll see what happens.”
