National Award-winning filmmaker Srijit Mukherji is set to direct Elementary, My Dear Holmes, an Indo-British co-production that intertwines Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s real-life story with that of his legendary fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
The project has secured the backing of the Conan Doyle Estate as associate producer, with Shahnaab Alam (The Lunchbox) producing through London-based Invisible Thread Media, and Mukherji’s Matchcut Productions handling the India leg.
Set in 1906 London, the story follows Doyle as he battles personal and moral conflicts — including his dying wife’s wish for him to marry another woman — while championing the cause of George Edalji, a wrongfully convicted man of Indian origin.
The narrative also explores Doyle’s involvement in the case of Oscar Slater, another victim of judicial injustice, as he uses his Holmesian logic to fight real-world wrongs.
“I first met Sherlock Holmes as a boy — not in Baker Street, but in the quiet between pages,” Mukherji told Variety. “Elementary, My Dear Holmes imagines Doyle stepping into his own fiction — a man haunted by the clarity he created, forced to apply it to a world far messier than the one on paper”.
Richard Pooley, director of the Conan Doyle Estate, said, “Few today realise how active he was throughout his adult life in fighting injustice at home and abroad. His campaign made people realise that a better mechanism was required for reviewing unsafe verdicts. In 1907 the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in England and Wales. In 1926 Scotland followed suit, partly as a result of the Oscar Slater case”.
The film is being structured under the U.K.-India Co-Production Treaty, jointly administered by the British Film Institute and India’s National Film Development Corporation.
Producer Shahnaab Alam said, “A period drama based on the British icon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to be directed by an Indian film-maker, Srijit Mukherji, represents the shared history of cultural and literary legacy between the two nations”.
“This isn’t just about more diverse stories, which are extremely important, but the international partnerships that offer new ways of telling stories, engaging with global audiences and more importantly changing the dynamics of who is telling those stories,” Munsur Ali, councilman for the City of London, added.