Srijit Mukherji to direct film on Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle

National Award-winning filmmaker Srijit Mukherji is taking on a fascinating new project — a feature film on Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated author who gave the world Sherlock Holmes.

Titled Elementary, My Dear Holmes, the film will be a British-Indian co-production, backed by the Conan Doyle Estate as an associate producer. The project will be produced by Shahnaab Alam through London-based Invisible Thread Media, with Mukherji’s Matchcut Productions handling the Indian side.

Set in London, 1906, the story follows Doyle as he navigates personal and moral dilemmas. While struggling with his wife’s dying wish that he remarry, Doyle finds himself drawn into the case of George Edalji, an Indian-origin man wrongly convicted of a crime. The narrative also explores the story of Oscar Slater, another victim of injustice, showing Doyle using his real-life detective instincts in a world that feels as complex as any Holmes mystery.

“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.”

The film is being developed under the UK-India Co-Production Treaty, jointly administered by the British Film Institute (BFI) and India’s National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

Mukherji, known for acclaimed works such as Jaatishwar, Chotushkone, Rajkahini and Gumnaami, won the National Award for Best Direction in 2015 for Chotushkone.