And the cast list for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes keeps getting…odd. Rachel McAdams, who quickly went from looking like a next big thing to second in the race against Elizabeth Banks, has been cast as Irene Adler. Not so much a romantic foil for Holmes as a cunning intellectual one, the retired opera prima donna Adler appeared in one story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal In Bohemia, where she actually manages to elude Holmes and, in doing so, earn his greatest respect.

Though she appears only in that one tale, Adler is mentioned in several others, and the character is being left open with the option to return in further Holmes flicks. THR actually calls the character an ‘enigmatic love interest’, but here’s hoping that she and Holmes actually keep their distance from one another. I’d actually love it, in a weird way, if Adler could be built up into a larger presence. Could be a perverse bit of fun in making Holmes think she and Moriarty are somehow connected.