Srijit Mukherji to direct Indo-British film on 'Sherlock Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle

London, Oct 28 (PTI) Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated British writer and creator of the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, will be the central character of a new India-UK co-production feature film, titled "Elementary My Dear Holmes".

The film, which Announced at a special event at the historic Guildhall in London on Monday, will be directed by National Award-winning filmmaker Srijit Mukherji and produced by Shahnaab Alam.

Mukherji, known for acclaimed Bengali titles such as "Autograph", "Jaatishwar" and "Gumnaami", said the film will explore the life and legacy of Conan Doyle, delving into the intersections between his reality and the fictional world he created.

“Doyle’s stories were less about deduction than the anatomy of curiosity itself; the need to look harder, closer, deeper,” said Mukherji, who was drawn to the stories Sherlock Holmes as a schoolboy.

“'Elementary My Dear Holmes' imagines Doyle stepping into his own fiction - a man haunted by the clarity he created, forced to apply it to a world far messier than the one on paper. The film begins with the murder of Mrs Gilchrist and the wrongful arrest of Oscar Slater, but what interests me isn’t the crime, it’s the man watching his imagination blur with reality,” he added.

The writer-director, behind in India, said he envisions the film to move “like Doyle’s own sentences — precise, deliberate, but trembling with what’s unsaid.” “Victorian London isn’t nostalgia here; it’s an atmosphere of reason and decay, where intellect and morality constantly misfire. For me, this isn’t just an adaptation. It’s a reflection on the act of creation, on what happens when your invention begins to investigate you,” he said.

Mukherji will produce the project through his company Matchcut Productions along with Alam’s London-based company Invisible Thread, under the UK-India Co-Production Treaty administered by the British Film Institute (BFI) and India’s National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

“This period drama represents the shared history of cultural and literary legacy between the two nations and assumes greater significance since Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation, Sherlock Holmes, remain possibly the UK’s greatest ever literary-cultural export to the world,” said Alam.

“Working on this film project has been a fascinating personal journey of discovering the polymathic vastness of the multi-faceted Doyle, whose interests and pursuits led him from being trained as a physician to a surgeon, military doctor, private investigator, advocate, psychic researcher, spiritualist, historian, lecturer, dramatist and sportsperson, apart from being a legendary author,” he added.

The project has been endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate, which was represented at the launch event by CEO Tim Hubbard and Doyle family members – Richard Pooley and Richard Doyle.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but few today realise how active he was throughout his adult life in fighting injustice at home and abroad,” said Pooley, director of the Conan Doyle Estate.

He cited Conan Doyle’s real-life campaign for the pardon of George Edalji, a young Indian lawyer wrongfully convicted in early 20th-century England, a case that was chronicled in author Shrabani Basu’s book "The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village".

“Although Conan Doyle failed in getting Edalji the compensation he deserved, his campaign made people realise that a better mechanism was required for reviewing unsafe verdicts; and in 1907, the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in England and Wales.

“The Doyle family, through the Conan Doyle Estate, wants the world to realise what a remarkable man their ancestor was. We believe this film will help us achieve that,” added Pooley.

The launch event, hosted by City of London Councilman Munsur Ali, also featured a specially curated exhibition of rare artefacts from the Conan Doyle Estate, showcasing the author’s wide-ranging pursuits beyond literature. PTI AK RB RB