Where to watch Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Trivia & production notes

• Producer Lionel Wigram spent about ten years developing the concept, imagining a bohemian version of Holmes who dressed like an artist or poet, inspired by the aesthetic of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
• Instead of a traditional spec script, Wigram wrote and artist John Watkiss illustrated a 25-page comic book to pitch the Sherlock Holmes concept.
• Warner Bros. greenlit the project in March 2007 after seeing similarities between the Sherlock Holmes concept and Batman Begins.
• Guy Ritchie, who was originally set to be replaced by Neil Marshall as director, grew up listening to Sherlock Holmes stories through loudspeakers in his boarding school dormitory.
• Lord Blackwood's character was crafted as a tribute to Victorian spiritualism and the influence of occultist Aleister Crowley.
• Some plot elements were drawn from the 1979 novel Enter the Lion: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes, though uncredited.
• During a fight scene at Chatham Dockyard, actor Robert Maillet accidentally punched Robert Downey Jr. in the face, leaving him bloodied, though he remained conscious despite initial reports.
• Manchester Town Hall served as a primary London filming location, with its interior courtyard hosting a fight scene and its Great Hall doubling as the House of Lords.
• Guy Ritchie joked that he rejected the iconic deerstalker hat for Holmes, noting there was only one person in history who actually wore one, and Robert Downey Jr. selected a beat-up fedora instead.
• The 221B Baker Street apartment scenes were constructed on a sound stage at Leavesden Studios and decorated with artifacts and scientific objects to reflect the characters' global travels.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Sherlock Holmes (2009 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.