Ian McKellen is already the older version of Michael Fassbender in the X-Men franchise, and now he’s gonna be an older Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr., as he’s signed up to play a retired Sherlock Holmes in A Slight Trick of the Mind.
The actor will play a retired Sherlock Holmes, who in 1947 is retired and lives in a sleepy Sussex village with his housekeeper and her amateur-sleuthing son. But far from living out a peaceful retirement, he is haunted by an unsolved case from fifty years ago. He remembers only fragments: a confrontation with an angry husband, a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife.
With his legendary mental powers on the wane, and without his old sidekick Watson, Holmes is faced with the toughest case of his life a case that might finally reveal to him the mysteries of the human heart.
Jeffrey Hatcher (The Duchess) wrote the screenplay adaptation based on Mitch Cullin’s novel. The film will reunite McKellen with director Bill Condon, who directed the actor to an Oscar nomination in Gods & Monsters.