At a Fast Company 2020 Innovation Festival panel, Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan confirmed “conversations are happening” to build a Sherlock Holmes multiverse.
The couple, who founded their own production company Team Downey in 2010, said that the Sherlock Holmes movie franchise could expand into a larger franchise like Marvel.
“Doing a one-off third movie, we could do, but we do think there’s opportunity to build it out more, to spin off some characters from the third movie, to see what’s going on in the television landscape, to see how Warner Media is starting to build things out with HBO and HBOMax… We definitely have kind of grand schemes and plans and all that, but it takes a lot,” revealed Susan Downey. “It takes a lot of coordination because again, Marvel wasn’t built in a day. It took several wins and things that worked very well to then be able to connect them, to then be able to branch out.”
Robert added: “At this point, we really feel there’s not a mystery-verse built out anywhere, and Conan Doyle is the definitive voice in that arena to this day, so to me, why do a third movie if you’re not going to be able to spin-off into some real gems of diversity, and other times and elements?”
Susan produced “Dolittle” in 2020 and “Sherlock Holmes” 2009, among many more films and TV series, many starring her husband.