Ian McKellen Will Play an Old Sherlock Holmes in 'A Slight Trick of the Mind'

Not content with playing just two legendary pop culture figures, Ian McKellen will tackle the role of Sherlock Holmes. On Thursday, it was announced that the actor would play the iconic detective in A Slight Trick of the Mind, a film directed by Bill Condon.

In 1947, Sherlock Holmes, long retired, lives in a sleepy Sussex village with his housekeeper and her amateur-sleuthing son. But far from living out a peaceful retirement, he is haunted by an unsolved case from fifty years ago. He remembers only fragments: a confrontation with an angry husband, a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife. 

With his legendary mental powers on the wane, and without his old sidekick Watson, Holmes is faced with the toughest case of his life — a case that might finally reveal to him the mysteries of the human heart.

I'm trying to figure out how the laws of movies work now. If McKellen is Magneto and Michael Fassbender is the young Magneto, and McKellen is Holmes and Robert Downey Jr. is a young Holmes, what does that mean for how Fassbender and Downey go together? Someone needs to get those two into a movie where they play the same role in order to bring this whole thing full circle.