Every ten or fifteen years, Sherlock Holmes seems to sound like a good idea for a movie again. I’m not one to complain; my collection of Holmes books still takes up more than a few boxes in the basement of my the house in Anchorage, but it’s a strange trend.

In the ’70s, we had Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and Gene Wilder’s The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975), and in the ’80s, two films I remember really enjoying, Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and Without a Clue (1988).

And now, news today of a Warner Bros. deal to adapt an upcoming comic book into a reinvented franchise, a la Christpher Nolan’s Batman. The move will see

Holmes losing some of his Victorian stuffiness and being more adventuresome, including playing up his skills as a bare-knuckle boxer and expert swordsman as he goes about solving crimes.

Holmes is already the most filmed fictional character in history, so it will be interesting to see another new take, but I cringe at the idea of a knock ’em, sock ’em Holmes; I much prefer the secretive, neurotic, supremely perceptive Holmes as played by the late Jeremy Brett .