Ian McKellen To Play A Retired Sherlock Holmes In Bill Condon’s A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND

Get ready for a 50-year-old unsolved case guys! We’ve just learned that Ian McKellen is set to star as a retired Sherlock Holmes in A Slight Trick of the Mind, an upcoming big screen adaptation of Mitch Cullin‘s book of the same name. Here’s another good news: Bill Condon, man who stands behind The Fifth Estate project is already on board to direct the whole thing! Sounds promising…

So, at this moment we know that Condon will direct this mystery from a script written Jeffrey Hatcher, and that McKellen will play a long-retired Holmes who lives in a sleepy village outside of London with his housekeeper and her amateur-sleuthing son.

The story, set in 1947, then centers on an unsolved case from 50 years ago where Holmes remembers only fragments: a confrontation with an angry husband and a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife.

Or, in case you want the official description of the novel:

The long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind. But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking–about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know.

Shooting gets underway in the UK next April, and the project is being co-financed and co-produced by Len Blavatnik’s AI Film, the production arm of Icon U.K. Group.

Hope we’ll soon have more updates to share, make sure you stay tuned!