Film Treatment: Sherlock Holmes: Hounds of the Baskervilles (2025)
Starring: Joseph C. Jukic as Sherlock Holmes
Paul Joseph Watson as Dr. John Watson
Written by: Joseph C. Jukic
Directed by: Guy Ritchie
Runtime: 124 minutes
Genre: Gothic Neo-Noir / Psychological Thriller / Mystery
TAGLINE:
“The past is not dead. It prowls the moors… with blood in its teeth.”
TONE & STYLE:
A kinetic, sharply edited, and dialogue-heavy modern retelling of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle story — told with Guy Ritchie’s signature whip-pan cinematography, gritty realism, and rapid-fire deduction sequences. Think The Man from U.N.C.L.E. meets True Detective with a splash of Sinister.
SYNOPSIS:
London, 2025.
Sherlock Holmes (Joseph C. Jukic) is no longer the coked-up recluse of old. He’s a steely-eyed, war-weathered intellectual, haunted by visions of the supernatural, the occult, and things science cannot explain. Haunted by his own PTSD from Balkan peacekeeping missions and MI6 black ops, Holmes has turned his mind toward a chilling mystery rooted in his Celtic bloodline.
Dr. John Watson (Paul Joseph Watson), a disillusioned former military medic and podcasting pundit, is called back to service as Holmes’s field man. The two are reunited by the sudden and mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville—an aristocrat found dead on the fog-covered moors with an expression of pure terror on his face and paw prints—enormous, inhuman—surrounding the body.
A curse, they say.
A demonic hound summoned by the sins of the Baskerville line.
Holmes doesn’t believe in legends. But even he can’t explain what’s growling outside the cottage at night.
ACT I:
The case is brought to Holmes by the heir to the Baskerville estate, the young and slightly paranoid Sir Henry Baskerville, fresh from Toronto. Holmes suspects a plot involving inheritance, greed, and land development deals with deep implications in the intelligence world. He sends Watson ahead to Baskerville Hall while he “vanishes” into the streets of London to dig into old family archives, war records, and colonial secrets.
ACT II:
Watson uncovers a twisted web of rural folklore, pagan blood sacrifices, and MI5 coverups involving a black ops biological warfare program known as Project Fenrir — based on canine genetics and psionic fear-induction.
The “hound” is no ghost. It’s the product of weaponized myth—designed to drive enemies insane on sight.
Meanwhile, Holmes appears unexpectedly in a pub, drunk but precise, whispering clues about the devil’s footprint, Norse symbology, and a family buried with silver daggers.
ACT III:
Holmes and Watson descend into the caverns beneath Baskerville Hall. They discover an abandoned military lab, corrupted by black magic rituals and genetic testing. The villain is Stapleton, a man posing as a friendly naturalist—but actually the bastard son of a forgotten Baskerville, using ancient Nordic rites and science to claim his inheritance… through terror.
The climax:
A full moon.
A hallucinogenic mist floods the moors.
Watson fends off soldiers gone mad from exposure while Holmes confronts the genetically engineered “hound” — a monstrous hybrid laced with ancient runes and nanotech.
Holmes destroys it using an explosive silver crucifix left to him by a Vatican contact in Sarajevo.
EPILOGUE:
Back in London, Watson records the experience in a podcast episode titled:
“The Beast on the Moors: A Warning to Modern Man.”
Holmes says nothing. He lights a pipe and stares into a mirror… where something still howls, far off, in the distance.
DIRECTOR’S VISION (Guy Ritchie):
- Flashback montages in split-screen.
- Stylized fight scenes — Holmes vs. corrupted soldiers in slow motion with deductive overlays.
- Brooding color palette: emerald greens and ash greys.
- Surreal moments questioning Holmes’s sanity: Is the hound real, or a projection of collective fear?
CAMEOS & FEATURES:
- Bono (as a ghostly bard singing “Moondog” in the pub)
- Nelly Furtado as the barmaid with an eerie ancestral connection to the curse
- Michael Caine as Lord Selden, the escaped convict and failed test subject
- Mark Rylance as Stapleton
THEMES:
- The weaponization of myth
- The cost of imperial secrets
- Fear as a tool of control
- The death of rationalism in an age of madness