Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly will share a movie screen once again in Holmes and Watson, scheduled to start filming after Thanksgiving, reports Deadline. Ferrell will take on the lead role as Sherlock Holmes, while Reilly will play his trusted sidekick, John Watson. Ferrell and Reilly first became a comedy dream team in the 2006 classic Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. But aside from a brief Reilly cameo in Anchorman 2, the duo hasn't been in a movie together since 2008's Step Brothers.
There's a lot going on here with Holmes and Watson. The long-gestating project has been rumored for a while, with Ferrell's other co-star from Talladega Nights—Sacha Baron Cohen—initially in line to play Watson. Now that the movie's finally gotten the green light, it's going to have to deal with existing alongside a bunch of other Sherlock Holmes adaptations, namely the immensely popular and critically acclaimed Sherlock, Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes franchise, and the CBS procedural Elementary.
This could be, frankly, too much Sherlock; do we really need a comedic take on the source material? But maybe working together again can stir up some magic for Ferrell and Reilly, and their comedic talents can do enough to differentiate their take on the Holmes and Watson characters.
If not, we'll always have the fucking Catalina wine mixer.
