Ian McKellen is Sherlock Holmes In New Trailer For Bill Condon’s MR HOLMES

Ian McKellen leads a stellar cast including Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Patrick Kennedy, Roger Allam, Frances de la Tour, Phil Davis and newcomer Milo Parker in Bill Condon’s MR HOLMES. The film reunites McKellen with director Bill Condon after their collaboration on the Academy Award-winning GODS AND MONSTERS.

Based on the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin, the intriguing premise for MR HOLMES reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a real person whose adventures have been turned into best-selling novels by his friend and partner Dr John Watson. Now old and in failing health, the famously rational detective is forced to engage for the first time with his emotions as his mental powers dwindle.

One of the key elements that made MR HOLMES such a pleasure for Bill Condon was the opportunity of reuniting with Ian McKellen after the success of Gods and Monsters. In both films, the focus is an elderly man – hugely famous in this film, of cult notoriety in the earlier film – forced to face up to his disintegrating mind and impending mortality, and how he finds solace in the burgeoning friendship with a younger person in the prime of their physical and mental health.

“Having made Gods and Monsters 17 years ago, Ian and I had always wanted to work together again and I had never found anything I ever thought worthy of sending to him. When I read this script, I thought this would be great for him and was so thrilled when I got the call back that he said it was a part and a half and he jumped right in as he did on Gods and Monsters. We were joking that when we did Gods and Monsters he was in his mid-late 50s playing James Whale towards the end of his life and now here in his 70s he’s playing Holmes at 93. I do have this knack for making him older than he is so we were saying all that is left is Methuselah which we can do when Ian is 90.”

McKellen was intrigued by the slow burn of the story. “It’s a mystery, a thriller,” explains the actor. “We find Holmes aged 93 living in retirement in the south of England where he keeps bees and is looked after by his housekeeper who has a son. That’s the beginning of it. The story creeps up on you and gets more complicated as it unfolds.”

The film’s score is by Carter Burwell (GODS AND MONSTERS). Watch a clip from the movie HERE.

MR. HOLMES will open in theaters this Summer.

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