Last year’s Sherlock Holmes was a surprisingly entertaining action-adventure vehicle with great performances by both Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Basically, it was an 80s-esque buddy cop movie set in the Victorian age, like Lethal Weapon meets Pride and Prejudice meets—well, Sherlock Holmes. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Considering Sherlock Holmes 2 is set to be released next Christmas, casting announcements are becoming more and more frequent and today, we're learning that Stephen Fry (V for Vendetta) is joining the cast.

Earlier in the month, Noomi Rapace (the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoowas cast as the female lead, and now British thespian Stephen Fry has been picked to portray the taller, older, smarter, and sexier—wait, no, scratch that last one—brother of Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes.

While on Danny Baker’s BBC’s 5 Live radio show, Stephen Fry talked Sherlock Holmes 2 (listen to the entire interview):

“I’m playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun, but just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar had was a once in a lifeftime thrill.”

 

Mycroft Holmes, while technically smarter and more deductive by Sherlock’s own admission, is also lazier and less ambitious. He works for the British government in an undefined role and functions, essentially, as a human computer. In The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Holmes said of his older brother:

“(Mycroft) has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points...”

Stephen Fry is perhaps best known in America as Deitrich in V for Vendetta, the narrator in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the voice of the Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. He's also responsible for a lot of voiceover work in videogames, including LittleBigPlanet and Fable 2.

Sherlock Holmes 2 cast includes Stephen Fry as Robert Downey Jr.'s brother, Mycroft Holmes

The Sherlock Holmes 2 antagonist role has yet to be filled, that of Sherlock’s arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Previously, rumors indicated that both Brad Pitt and Daniel Day-Lewis were up for the much-desired role. Who wouldn’t want to portray one of the most iconic villains in the history of literature?

Sherlock Holmes 2, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and Noomi Rapace, begins shooting this fall, which means the casting of Moriarty will likely be announced shortly.

Sources: Danny Baker’s BBC’s 5 Live [via Variety]