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In which Andrea Plunket scrambles to save face regarding her threats to withhold rights to Holmes sequel...

Though the new Guy Ritchie film “Sherlock Holmes” has elicited a range of responses from fans and critics — some loved it, some say it made them want to leap off Reichenbach Falls — the movie has nonetheless received an enthusiastic endorsement from one person connected to Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective.

Andrea Plunket, whose ex-husband, Sheldon Reynolds, produced the 1950s “Sherlock Holmes” television series, and who still claims some rights to the character, said in a telephone interview that she “loved” the Ritchie film, and had already seen it twice: once at a premiere and once on her own dollar.

Ms. Plunket denied a report that appeared on the Web site TotalFilm.com, which said that she might stand in the way of a “Sherlock Holmes” sequel because of the movie’s characterization of the relationship between Holmes (played by Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), and Mr. Downey’s remarks in an interview with David Letterman that Holmes might be a “very butch homosexual.”

“It didn’t strike me as being a gay relationship,” Ms. Plunket said of the characters’ portrayal in Mr. Ritchie’s film. She added, “As a good friend was fond of saying, ‘A dirty mind is a perpetual feast.’”

The question of who ultimately controls Holmes’s media appearances is a mystery that might flummox the detective himself. Though most of Doyle’s original stories are old enough to have fallen into the public domain, his collection “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes” is still under copyright. Ms. Plunket says she is the administrator of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate, but has not been able to trademark the name Sherlock Holmes. According to the Sherlockian.net Web site, the copyrights to Doyle’s characters are still retained by the estate of Jean Conan Doyle, the author’s second daughter.

Ms. Plunket said she felt the Ritchie film was “truer” to Doyle’s original stories than other cinematic presentations of Sherlock Holmes, particularly the 1930s- and 40s-era films that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. “People are fossilized by the Basil Rathbone films,” she said. “These are not people who have read all the stories.” She added that Doyle himself was an athlete, and that it made sense his Holmes would be “physical and very capable of being an athlete.”

She said she had no plans to hold up a possible “Sherlock Holmes” sequel.

“If they make another film as half as good as this one,” Ms. Plunket said, “it would be terrific.”

Source: New York Times ArtBeats Blog

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