Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman may be returning for BBC’s “Sherlock” in 2015, but Cumberbatch won’t be the only one playing the iconic detective as Ian McKellen will star a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes in director Bill Condon‘s Mr. Holmes (aka A Slight Trick of the Mind) and the first look at McKellen in character has just been revealed via the actor’s Twitter feed.
McKellen stars in the film alongside Laura Linney as Ms. Munroe with the story set in 1947, centered on the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, living in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper (Linney) and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind. But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking-about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know.
Hiroyuki Sanada (The Wolverine) is also a member of the cast playing Umezaki, a Prickly Ash plant enthusiast whom Holmes visits in Japan.
Condon wrote the screenplay based on Mitch Cullin‘s novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind“, first published in 2005. FilmNation and BBC Films are producing for an anticipated 2015 release.
