Netflix sued for making Sherlock Holmes too emotional

The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the guy who came up with Sherlock Holmes, is suing Netflix for making a movie where Sherlock is…too nice?

Here’s a weird one: so Netflix is making a new Sherlock Holmes movie starring The Witcher star Henry Cavill as the famed detective and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown as his little sister Enola, a budding super-sleuth herself. (Also Helena Bonham Carter plays their mom and Sam Claflin is Sherlock’s brother Mycroft; it’s a pretty good cast.)

The whole thing is based on the Enola Holmes books by Nancy Springer, and has Brown’s character in the center. Sounds cute, right? Well, not if the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, the original writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, has anything to say about it.

According to Deadline, the Doyle estate has filed a lawsuit against both Netflix and Springer. They want to to stop the Netflix movie from going forward, as well as get paid a bunch of damages and fees; you can read the whole complaint here if you want.

What’s their damage? It has to do with copyright law.

You see, Doyle started writing the first Sherlock Holmes mystery stories a looooong time ago, back in the 1890s. But he kept writing them until 1927 (he died in 1930). In 2014, a court decided that all the Sherlock Holmes stories written before 1923 were in the public domain, meaning that anyone could adapt them without having to pay the Doyle estate. But the estate still had a copyright in the stories written between 1923 and 1927.

Now, the Doyle estate is accusing Netflix and Springer of cribbing from those later stories. In particular, they object to them depicting Sherlock Holmes as having feelings. Before Doyle’s brother died in World War I, they argue, the character was pretty much emotionless. But afterwards, Doyle made the “surprising artistic decision” to get in touch with Sherlock’s sensitive side. Quoth the complaint:

"Holmes became warmer. He became capable of friendship. He could express emotion. He began to respect women.His relationship to Watson changed from that of a master and assistant to one of genuine friendship. Watson became more than just a tool for Holmes to use. ‘He became a partner. The friendship of Holmes and Watson became one of the most important and well known in modern literature."

So basically, the Doyle estate is saying that Netflix can’t make Sherlock Holmes a nice guy. They own Friendly Sherlock Holmes.

Personally, I think the whole thing is kinda ridiculous. I mean, the idea that the Doyle estate has a copyright in stories that are nearly 100 years old is silly to start. Then there’s the fact that Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes books were published in the late 2010s, but the estate never made a move against her until now, probably because it finally saw dollar signs when Netflix got involved. It didn’t go after the BBC’s Sherlock show, either, or those movies with Robert Downey Jr.

If the New Mexico district court finds for the Doyle estate, it would make handling Sherlock Holmes really difficult. So the cold, emotionless version would be fair game but an empathetic Sherlock who “respect[s] women” would be off limits? Wouldn’t we rather have one onscreen?

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