Since Hollywood has become a literal turbine of remakes and franchising, it’s not unusual at all to hear about acquisition of books that aren’t yet released (but are expected to be big hits) and for sequels to be planned before predecessors have even finished production. Warner Brothers at least finished getting Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows into the can before moving forward with a sequel, but they’re clearly happy with the product and optimistic about its reception since they’re already dropping the dough to have the incresingly busy Drew Pearce begin on a script for a 3rd Holmes outing.
Of course, it isn’t as if WB is throwing unloaded dice or anything… the first film made well over half a billion dollars worldwide (more than every single comic book release this summer by a wide margin, for example), and I see no reason the sequels won’t do as much or more. The pittance the studio will ultimately spend on getting the script going ahead of release will be nothing compared to the scheduling advantage they’ll have with a screenplay ready to go after the second one hits.
Drew Pearce meanwhile, is joining a large roster of writers that have put finger to keyboard for the franchise– the first film’s script was one of those Frankenstein creations with five names scattered among the “and”s and ampersands. The second was the creation of screenwriting couple Kieran and Michele Mulroney. Pearce will be the latest newcomer to the franchise and he must have shown some penchant for writing snappy dialogue for Robert Downey Jr, as he’s coming to this off of working on Iron Man 3 with Shane Black.
Twitter
Comment Below
Message Board
Source | Deadline