From the looks of its trailer (embedded below), the new Sherlock Holmes movie looks promising (though, admittedly, I’ve never been much of a Guy Ritchie fan). But now comes the news that Warner Bros is already working on a sequel.
The Risky Biz Blog reports that three months ahead of the film’s American release, the studio is far enough along in development to be considering a writing team. According to The Biz story, they’re considering Kieran and Michele Mulroney, who wrote the recent film Paper Man” and also scripted “Justice League: Mortal.”
Robert Downey Jr., of course, is a hot draw at the moment (and also one of my personal favorites) and I’m sure this film will make a ton of cash. It might even set some Christmas Day opening records.
Undoubtedly, this move represents a great deal of faith on Warners’ part, but doesn’t it also smell of excess? This is the very issue so many have complained about regarding Hollywood in the last few years: the obsession with the bottom line, with churning out quantity over quality.
Lure a big name, create a franchise around it, make tons of money and then rush out a sequel (or sequels). Perhaps I’m a bit pessimistic here; there have been recent exceptions to this rule (Superman Returns comes to mind), but in Hollywood, greed usually wins the day.
No matter how much we might like to forget when we plop ourselves down in that darkened theater, Hollywood is a business, first and foremost. And that, is elementary.
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