It’s no mystery why Millie Bobby Brown was chosen to play Enola Holmes for Netflix’s eponymous film.
After the Stranger Things actress instantly draws viewers into the trailer with a sly aside to the camera, she continues to dominate the preview with a charming and dynamic performance. In just over two and a half minutes, she establishes Enola as an intelligent and rule-breaking expert fighter who is desperate to solve the mystery of her mother’s (Helena Bonham Carter) disappearance. But there are two big obstacles in her way.
The movie will follow Nancy Springer’ s Edgar Award Nominated “The Enola Holmes Mysteries”, and have Enola try to find her mother while avoiding her older brothers: Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Played by Henry Cavill and Sam Claffin respectively, the two actors have the physical presence and charisma to go head to head with Millie Bobby’s Brown’s fun performance. While Sherlock’s concern for Enola made Netflix the subject of a lawsuit (because the version of Sherlock Holmes in the public domain apparently doesn’t care about anyone, no matter how his relationship with Doctor Watson would seem to indicate otherwise), his relationship with Enola will undoubtedly add some emotional stakes to the story.
Netflix will deduce whether its viewers want to see more of Enola Holmes and her famous family when it premieres on the platform September 23rd.
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I’m deeply amused by the idea of an official court ruling on whether Sherlock Homes is a big ol’ jerk.
Holmes wasn’t a jerk. BBC Sherlock is a jerk. Real Holmes could actually be polite when he was around people.
I reread the whole Doyle canon earlier this year, and I found that Holmes was a much warmer, more compassionate and expressive figure than he’s come to be perceived in popular culture — closer to Jonny Lee Miller than Benedict Cumberbatch, so to speak (though Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett work just as well). He made a show of being only concerned with logic, but he was much kinder than he was willing to admit. (One could imagine that Watson softened him up to make him more appealing, but one could just as validly take the portrayal as authentic.) But people will come up with the most absurd excuses for lawsuits over valuable creative properties.
Why is it that Mycroft is usually played by thin actors? He’s supposed to be “a much larger and stouter man” than his younger brother. Stephen Fry in A Game of Shadows was a good fit, and Charles Gray in the Brett series was perfect, but there have been so many thin Mycrofts like Claflin, Mark Gatiss, Rhys Ifans, Richard E. Grant, and Hugh Laurie. Although I see it’s not a recent trend; Christopher Lee played him in 1970 (having previously played Sherlock!).
Also, Sam Claflin (Mycroft) is three years younger than Henry Cavill (Sherlock)! What gives?
@3 superman ages slower than humans .
@2 Mr. Holmes starring Ian Mckellan was very much about Sherlock Holmes’s softer side and how he chose to present himself. Didn’t know much about what that movie was going to be about but really enjoyed it.
I’m looking forward to watching this show. I enjoyed the books when I read them years ago. The trailer looks fun.
Mr. Holmes is indeed a really good movie; it’s far less depressing than the book upon which it was based. Sir Ian does a great job as an aged Holmes beginning to lose the thing he’s always considered most important to him: his mind.
@3:
Or that the portrayal was deliberately roughened up, to make him more formidable–though I find your suggestion likelier.
I can see why Sherlock and Mycroft are such…interesting…characters if their mommy was Bellatrix
I already wanted to take a good look at this particular production – I have a soft spot for Mr Henry Cavill and an interest in seeing whether my ‘Cavill should play Batman’ theory is borne out by his performance as The Great Detective – but this trailer convinces me that I simply have to see ENOLA HOLMES because it all looks Good!
I mean they even have a connection to YEAR OF THE RABBIT – what more can one ask for? (Actually Mr Matt Berry would make a very promising Mycroft Holmes, perhaps they should have acquired an extra connection to that Victorian Detective Comedy … ).
Amusingly, Mr Sam Claflin looks rather more like my conception of Sherlock Holmes than Mr Cavill does; perhaps they could swap out the moustache and adventure as a Holmes & Watson duo? (I’ve always been firmly of the opinion that Doctor Watson ought to be the outrageously handsome one, being the Classic Adventure Hero Vs Holmes’ Detective Hero).
Doyle’s Holmes was very aware of how vulnerable women were to exploitation in his culture and often expressed particular concern for female clients. In Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Sherlock is very worried about a client who has accepted an extremely peculiar job offer, telling Watson he wouldn’t like to see his sister take such a position. If Holmes had a sister I don’t doubt he’d be extremely, perhaps annoyingly, protective.of her.
I don’t remember hearing about Sherlock versus Netflex…good grief! I thought Doyle’s work was in the public domain? How could they have any basis for this lawsuit? What a waste of time and money.
@11
I believe a few of Doyle’s later Holmes stories are still not yet in the public domain. But they’re getting close, and these lawsuits are getting sad and absurd.
But if you really want to see something absurd, look up the ongoing copyright claims over Zorro. Good grief.
@11- As I understand it, the Sherlock Holmes stories written before 1923 are in the public domain (in the US). Those published afterwards (ten stories), remain under copyright by the Doyle Estate. The estate has previously argued that this should mean that the character of Holmes remains protected as long as those stories are under copyright. A judge rejected that argument back in 2014, but in doing so did say that features introduced in the later stories were protected.
Nonsense, says the judge. “What this has to do with copyright law eludes us,” he writes. “There are the early Holmes and Watson stories, and the late ones, and features of Holmes and Watson are depicted in the late stories that are not found in the early ones. … Only in the late stories for example do we learn that Holmes’s attitude toward dogs has changed — he has grown to like them — and that Watson has been married twice. These additional features, being (we may assume) ‘original’ in the generous sense that the word bears in copyright law, are protected by the unexpired copyrights on the late stories.
“But Klinger wants just to copy the Holmes and the Watson of the early stores, the stories no longer under copyright. The Doyle estate tells us that ‘no workable standard exists to protect the Ten Stories’ incremental character development apart from protecting the completed characters.’ But that would be true only if the early and the late Holmes, and the early and the late Watson, were indistinguishable — and in that case there would be no incremental originality to justify copyright protection of the ’rounded’ characters … in the later works.”
The estate’s claim here would seem to be that the version of Sherlock Holmes who cares about people arises from the character development in those last ten stories, and is therefore a distinct character from the early, uncaring Holmes that exists in public domain, and that the caring Holmes is still protected by copyright.
@13/Benjamin: “The estate’s claim here would seem to be that the version of Sherlock Holmes who cares about people arises from the character development in those last ten stories, and is therefore a distinct character from the early, uncaring Holmes that exists in public domain, and that the caring Holmes is still protected by copyright.”
Which means either they haven’t read the stories and are just making assumptions about their content, or they’re deliberately lying so they can profit. Both of which are things Sherlock Holmes would find utterly reprehensible.
@@@@@ 14: I’d incline towards the latter- it seems as though they were presented with a case where the only way they could assert any level of control over a valuable property was by creating a distinction between Early Holmes and Late Holmes, and, since as far as I know no one is planning on releasing a major Sherlock Holmes adaptation that centers around him liking dogs, there’s a pretty clear motive to come up with some reason why any significant Holmes adaptation must be drawing from the final ten adaptations. I suspect, although I cannot prove, that if Netflix were putting out a Sherlock Holmes property where he was cold and uncaring, the estate would find some other grounds on which to complain.
Either way, I’m always intrigued by cases where a judge is required to make legal rulings about the nature of fictional characters or worlds. This is how we wound up with Aaron Sorkin offering to stage a courtroom battle in court, or a ruling that Marvel’s Wilson Fisk isn’t a human.
Question: Don’t works enter public domain a certain number of years after the author’s death? What am I missing? How can certain works be in the public domain while others aren’t when they’re by the same author?
@16: I’m not a copyright lawyer, but my understanding is that at the moment, in the US, works published before 1925 are now in the public domain. Works published from 1925 to 1977 are copyrighted for 95 years after publication, and works published after 1977 are copyrighted until seventy years after the author’s death, or, if there’s no one identifiable author, 95 years after publication (or 120 years after creation, if that’s earlier). There’s also some specific rules regarding works that were created in an era covered by one set of rules and published in another, or for works that were not copyrighted at the time of their publication, but I don’t think either of those apply to Holmes.
@16
There are copyrights out there that should have expired decades ago, but there’s this evil corporation called Disney…
First: wow, is that a solid trailer! I definitely need to watch that when it drops.
Now, then….
The chain of ownership with respect to the Sherlock Holmes copyrights is even more complicated than has so far been noted herein, and more often than not the descent of the literary estate has been marked by financing from non-family sources. The very highly condensed version:
ACD’s sons, Adrian and Denis, initially managed the literary estate, most notably licensing Sheldon Reynolds to produce an American TV series in the 1950s. But control of the company formed to do so (Baskerville Investments Ltd.), passed to Denis’ surviving wife — and then into receivership, so that Reynolds and his wife, Andrea, were able to acquire the whole literary estate in the 1970s from the Bank of Scotland (financed largely by Andrea’s mother, a Pfizer heiress). The Reynoldses controlled the estate for some years, until ACD’s daughter, Dame (Lena) Jean Conan Doyle (not to be confused with her mother, also named Jean) was able to regain control of the remaining copyrights via litigation. This did not, however, prevent Andrea Reynolds (now Plunket) from continuing for a number of years to claim – and collect – licensing fees for use of the Holmes characters from a variety of publishers and producers. (Some authors and publishers evidently paid licensing fees to both the Reynolds and Doyle organizations!) This article gives a somewhat more detailed survey, with links to further sources. The current Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. is overseen by an eight-member board consisting largely of ACD’s indirect descendants – there are no surviving direct descendants, as none of ACD’s offspring are known to have had children of their own.
Essentially, if one reads between the lines, ACD’s literary estate was not very well managed by his surviving sons, there’s at least some reason to question the thoroughness of the legal work in at least one of the transitions of ownership, and both the latter-day Plunket organization and the current Conan Doyle Estate are overclaiming their own rights to collect licensing fees.
(And just to throw a further monkey wrench into the discussion: I recently read a book asserting the claim that Sherlock Holmes was created not by Arthur Conan Doyle, but by his first wife, Louise – which does not, amazingly enough, come across as a Nutty Conspiracy Theory. I am not wholly convinced, but the author’s arguments are cogent and well presented….)
since as far as I know no one is planning on releasing a major Sherlock Holmes adaptation that centers around him liking dogs
I think there is definitely a good basis for believing that Holmes had had a dog of his own at some point in the past. As the current owner of a small and enthusiastic dog, I can gloomily agree with his observation in Silver Blaze that any time a dog does nothing at all in the night-time is indeed a curious incident.
@20: Excellent. For entirely selfish reasons I encourage you to make a movie based around this premise, that the ensuing legal battle may force a judge to issue a legal ruling on whether or not Sherlock Holmes owned a dog.
Holmes’s deduction in “Silver Blaze” didn’t require personal ownership of dogs, it just required observation of this particular dog:
“The Simpson incident had shown me that a dog was kept in the stables, and yet, though someone had been in and had fetched out a horse, he had not barked enough to arouse the two lads in the loft. Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”
I think I’ve got a crush on everyone in the trailer except Sam Claffin
21: yes, 20 was a joke.
Holmes, we learn in “The Gloria Scott”, met his only close friend at university because the friend’s bull-terrier savaged his ankle, confining Holmes to his room for ten days while he recovered. I think it’s safe to assume that someone who can have that happen and still be friends with the dog’s owner is an extremely pro-dog individual.
@25: “20 was a joke.”
Yes? I largely understood it to be so- while I wouldn’t want to discourage you, I do not in fact seriously expect you to produce Sherlock Holmes: Dog Lover.
@26/Benjamin: I went Googling for “Sherlock Bones” under the absolute certainty that someone, somewhere must have done “Sherlock Holmes as a dog” in some format, and yes, they did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Bones
It’s a manga (originally named Sherdock the Detective Dog) about a Japanese teenager named Wajima who solves crimes along with a dog who’s the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Wajima’s big sister is a detective named Airin (pronounced “Irene”).
@27
We’re getting close to Rule 34 territory now.
@@@@@ 27: Huh. I’d’ve gone with Sherlock Hound myself, but I guess that’s just going to get people confused with “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
I wonder if they paid a licensing fee to the estate! I don’t know nearly enough about international copyright law to guess how that would pay out- the estate’s webpage does list the (partly) Hulu Japan produced “Miss Sherlock,” which features gender-flipped Holmes and Watson, as a licensed property, (and the licensed children’s book “Pound of the Baskervilles,” to return to the dog question) but they don’t seem to have any manga or comics listed.
Suddenly I feel like Millie could play a young Carrie Fisher. And then I suddenly feel like a biopic about the filming of A New Hope is something I’d like to see. Somebody do that.
@29/Benjamin: I’ve been wanting to see Miss Sherlock. I’m a fan of Japanese film/TV and of Sherlock Holmes, so it’s a natural. Do you know if it’s available on American Hulu? I may be re-subscribing to that soon.
@31/Chris: Unfortunately it only seems to be available on Hulu if you also pay for the HBO channel add-on (or do the free trial and binge it, I suppose).
#29: That’s been done, too.
Actually, the range of Holmesiana is pretty much infinite, as illustrated by these two fanvids.
Something Good (Will Come from That)
Infinitely Stranger: An Ode to Bonkers Holmesiana
#27 I went Googling for “Sherlock Bones” under the absolute certainty that someone, somewhere must have done “Sherlock Holmes as a dog” in some format, and yes, they did
How about Wishbone? One of the main images from that show is the lead character in a deerstalker.
And back in the early ’60s, Jim Henson created Baskerville. He’s not as famous as Rowlf, but you’ve probably seen him in the backround of older Muppet productions.
Regarding Enola Holmes, after the first teaser trailers, I read the whole series & enjoyed them.
And in all this discussion of Holmes’ younger smarter sibling, no one is talking about Sigerson.
As in the Gene Wilder movie?
What also about Sherrinford Holmes, then?
The Jeremy Brett portrayal of Holmes, especially in the later seasons when Brett has got past his own personal demons, is the definitive portrayal of Holmes on screen.
Enola Holmes certainly looks like it will be much more lively than the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants with George C. Scott believing that he’s Sherlock Holmes and Joanne Woodward as Dr. Watson (wikipedia).